It's the Word of the Day podcast for March 11th.

Today's word is quark, spelled Q-U-A-R-K. Quark is a noun. It's a word used in physics to refer to any one of several types of very small particles that make up matter.

Here's the word used, in a sentence from Wired by Matt von Hippel.

One quantum field is special because its default value can change.

Called the Higgs field, it controls the mass of many fundamental particles like electrons and quarks.

Unlike every other quantum fields physicists have discovered, the Higgs field has a default value above

zero. Diling the Higgs field value up or down would increase or decrease the mass of electrons and other particles.

If the setting of the Higgs field were zero, those particles would be mass less.

If you were a physics major, chances are that James Joyce didn't make it onto your syllabus.

While literature majors are likely more familiar with his work, Joyce has a

surprising tie to physics. In the early 1960s, American physicist Murray Gelman came up with the

word quark, Q-U-O-R-K, which he used to refer to his concept of an elementary particle smaller

than a proton or neutron. By his own account, he was

in the habit of using names like squeak and squark for peculiar objects. He later settled on

the spelling with an A, after reading a line from Joyce's Finnegan's wake, three quarks for

muster mark, sure he has not got much of a bark, and sure

any he has, it's all beside the mark. The name stuck and has been used by physicists ever since.

With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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