> But are happy with ones which are based on very clear
> misunderstandings of simple English words. "Up" as a property of
> quarks is not the opposite of "down". Evocative or nay, that's a
> wrong use.
what on earth are you saying? (can't you read a map???)
if you look at a map of Strange-Charge space, the up and down quarks lie on a line of constant Strangeness and varying Charge.
the up quark has a charge of 2/3, the down quark has a charge of -1/3. so, like, in the (positive) charge direction, the up quark is higher than the down quark, and so up and down kinda fit. and they are opposites in the sense that they have opposite charge (plus and minus).
so there is a rough way in which the description up-down works and they sit opposite each other in S-Q space. the s quark sits sideways direction from the up and down quarks (it has the same charge as the down quark), the majority of your daily run-of-the-mill particles are made of the up and down quarks. the proton is made of a triple of quarks u-u-d ( 2/3 + 2/3 + -1/3 = 1 charge) and neutron is u-d-d ( 2/3 + -1/3 + -1/3 = 0 charge). (the electron aint got no quarks at'all).
that s-s-s-s-illy (s-s-s-s-ideways) quark makes for oddball stuff and so is s-s-s-s-trange indeed. in S-Q space the s (strange) quark is neither up nor down from the up quark, but sits kitty corner to it.
> I have no horse in this race -- I'm an economics spod, myself. But
> I've had my nerves struck hard and often by maths and physics types
> who regularly truck into the markets, call themselves "rocket
> scientists" and then proceed to misapply their models to economic
> data while refusing to understand basic concepts of finance.
this i can appreciate... i know more than a few hot-shot math types who try to make this leap.
les schaffer
p.s. some nice pictures and a little "history" which shows why the names up and down might have occured at the appropriate historical juncture:
http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/hienergy/tutorial/fundamentals.html