Physics & Chemistry
Test your knowledge of Subatomic Particles and the Standard Model of Physics with a free trivia word search from thewordfind.com. Read each clue, work out the answer, then find it hidden in the letter grid — every puzzle is freshly generated, so no two plays are ever quite the same. Don't know an answer? Tap the hint button in-game to reveal the first letter, or just scan the grid — every answer is hiding in there somewhere. Between the clues and the full answer key below, this topic doubles as a quick study guide — good for a trivia night, a classroom quiz, or just picking up something new about Subatomic Particles and the Standard Model of Physics along the way.
Play This Puzzle →A few sample clues
Which nuclear process powers the Sun by combining light nuclei, such as hydrogen, into heavier ones?
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Which physicist co-authored a landmark 1954 gauge-theory paper with Robert Mills, foundational to the Standard Model?
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Which Belgian physicist shared the 2013 Nobel Prize with Peter Higgs for the mass-giving mechanism's theory?
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Which physicist led the Fermilab team that discovered the bottom quark in 1977?
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Which physicist proposed the neutrino's existence in 1930, doubting it would ever actually be detected?
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All 67 questions in this topic, with answers — use it to study, or just browse. Every actual play of the puzzle only pulls a random handful of these into one game, so knowing them all here won't spoil which ones show up or where they're hidden in the grid. Play it here.
Which quantum property, measured in units of Planck's constant, distinguishes bosons from fermions?
SPINWhich physicist co-authored the 1954 Yang-_ _ _ _ _ gauge theory paper, foundational to the Standard Model?
MILLSWhich hypothetical, never-yet-observed particle is predicted to carry the force of gravity?
GRAVITONWhich positively charged particle sits in an atom's nucleus and was identified around 1917?
PROTONWhich three-letter abbreviation names the world's largest and most powerful particle collider, near Geneva?
LHCWhich lightest meson was central to a 1935 theory explaining the strong nuclear force?
PIONWhich physicist shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics for the 1956 detection of the neutrino?
REINESWhich Pakistani physicist shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for unifying the weak and electromagnetic forces?
SALAMWhich type of radioactive decay releases a high-speed electron or positron from an unstable nucleus?
BETAWhich term names atoms of the same element that share a proton count but differ in their number of neutrons?
ISOTOPEWhich physicist completed the trio with Friedman and Kendall who shared the 1990 quark-evidence Nobel Prize?
TAYLORWhich Fermilab accelerator, retired in 2011, found the top quark in 1995 by colliding protons and antiprotons?
TEVATRONWhich physicist independently proposed the quark model in 1964 alongside Murray Gell-Mann?
ZWEIGWhich American national laboratory near Chicago discovered both the bottom and the top quark?
FERMILABWhich particle family, which includes the electron and its neutrino, never feels the strong nuclear force?
LEPTONWhich physicist shared the 1976 Nobel Prize for co-discovering the J/psi particle at Brookhaven?
TINGWhich term describes the property, analogous to electric charge, that governs how strongly a quark feels the strong force?
COLORWhich physicist's 1932 discovery of a positively charged mirror of the electron confirmed a 1928 prediction of antimatter?
ANDERSONWhich antimatter counterpart of the electron carries a positive charge and was predicted by a 1928 equation?
POSITRONWhich measure of a particle's tendency to decay describes the time needed for half a sample to transform?
HALFLIFEWhich fundamental force, roughly 10 to the 38th power weaker than the strong force, binds planets and galaxies together?
GRAVITYWhich composite particle is built from one quark and one antiquark, such as the pion?
MESONWhich composite particle, discovered in 1947, carries a property physicists nicknamed 'strangeness'?
KAONWhich physicist discovered the tau lepton at the SLAC laboratory in 1976?
PERLWhich physicist, working with Reines, first experimentally detected the neutrino in 1956?
COWANWhich American physicist shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with Glashow and Salam for electroweak theory?
WEINBERGWhich fundamental force binds quarks together inside protons and neutrons via constant gluon exchange?
STRONGWhich physicist joined Friedman and Taylor in sharing the 1990 Nobel Prize for early experimental evidence of quarks?
KENDALLWhich Dutch physicist shared the 1984 Nobel Prize for developing the technique that revealed the W and Z bosons?
MEERWhich heavier cousin of the electron, about 200 times its mass, was found in cosmic ray studies in 1936?
MUONWhich Dutch physicist showed in 1971 that Yang-Mills gauge theories could be mathematically renormalized?
HOOFTWhich massless particle, of which there are eight color varieties, carries the strong force between quarks?
GLUONWhich composite particle, built from three quarks, includes both the proton and the neutron?
BARYONWhich class of force-carrying particles, which includes the photon and gluon, has whole-number spin?
BOSONWhich physicist proposed in 1964 the hidden quark property later called color, developed by Han and Nambu?
GREENBERGWhich general term describes an unstable particle or nucleus transforming into other particles over time?
DECAYWhich massless force-carrying particle has no electric charge and mediates electromagnetism?
PHOTONWhich third-generation charged lepton, roughly 3,500 times heavier than the electron, was found at SLAC in 1976?
TAUWhich of the two general-purpose detector experiments at the Large Hadron Collider shares its name with a mapmaking Titan?
ATLASWhich building block of matter comes in six 'flavors' and combines in threes to form protons and neutrons?
QUARKWhich term names the empty backdrop of space that, in quantum field theory, still seethes with fleeting virtual particles?
VACUUMWhich nearly massless, electrically neutral lepton was proposed in 1930 to explain missing energy in beta decay?
NEUTRINOWhich scalar particle, discovered at CERN in 2012, explains why other particles have mass?
HIGGSWhich physicist shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with Salam and Weinberg for unifying two fundamental forces?
GLASHOWWhich California laboratory, home to a two-mile linear accelerator, discovered the tau lepton?
SLACWhich European laboratory straddling the French-Swiss border operates the Large Hadron Collider?
CERNWhich physicist's 1928 equation predicted antimatter years before it was first observed?
DIRACWhich electrically neutral nuclear particle was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932?
NEUTRONWhich nuclear process splits a heavy atomic nucleus into smaller fragments, releasing energy inside a reactor?
FISSIONWhich three-letter detector experiment at CERN, alongside its counterpart, co-discovered the Higgs boson in 2012?
CMSWhich principle states that physics is unchanged when charge, parity, and time are all reversed together?
THEOREMWhich physicist shared the 1990 Nobel Prize for deep inelastic scattering experiments giving the first evidence for quarks?
FRIEDMANWhich class of matter particles, which includes quarks and leptons, is named for an Italian-American physicist?
FERMIONWhich of the four fundamental forces causes radioactive beta decay and has the shortest effective range?
WEAKWhich type of radioactive decay releases a particle identical to a helium nucleus, two protons and two neutrons bound together?
ALPHAWhich quark flavor gets its playful name from the unexpectedly long lifetime of particles that contain it?
STRANGEWhich Italian physicist shared the 1984 Nobel Prize for the experimental discovery of the W and Z bosons?
RUBBIAWhich British physicist's 1897 cathode-ray experiments led directly to the discovery of the electron?
THOMSONWhich term describes quarks' surprising tendency to interact weakly when squeezed extremely close together?
FREEDOMWhich negatively charged lepton orbits the atomic nucleus and was identified by J. J. Thomson in 1897?
ELECTRONWhich type of radioactive decay releases high-energy electromagnetic radiation, more energetic than X-rays?
GAMMAWhich quark flavor's 1974 confirmation, via the J/psi particle, shares its everyday name with a lucky trinket?
CHARM