Quark Matter Card Games

Abstract

The disclosed Quark matter card game and methods of playing with cards represent elementary particles which provides first-hand, fun, attractive and enjoyable experience for laypersons such as for example, children, students and researchers to have a hands-on experience of particle and high energy heavy ion or nuclear physics using simple and inexpensive tools. Anyone who knows the colors, red, green, blue, black and white, can start to play one of the games described herein. According an embodiment, the disclosed card game is directed to a deck for playing an educational game, the deck comprises a plurality of card-like devices having a face bearing a representation of an elementary particle.

Description

I. FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates generally to the explanation of the results and discoveries in high energy particle and nuclear physics to the general public, in a way that is understandable and enjoyable in layman terms, and it empowers laymen to comprehend elementary particles on their own. More particularly, the present invention is directed to a card game that provides bridges among elementary particles, quark matter, entertainment and self-education. The cards in these games represent the smallest known constituents of our world: each card corresponds to one of the elementary particles, the set of cards forming a deck.

II. BACKGROUND

Particle and heavy ion physics are important and expensive fields of fundamental physics research. Because of its high costs, it is desirable to familiarize non physicists with some of the outcomes of these areas of research. The disclosed card game provides an excellent opportunity to reach this goal. The Quark Matter Card Games introduce several essential concepts of current understanding of elementary particle and heavy ion physics research and they do this task in an interactive, playful manner. So the players have fun while entertaining themselves with these cards, and at the same time they learn about quark matter, cosmic showers, particle detection and decays and some physics of the Standard Model. It would be desirable to have a card game simulating the intellectual joy that is felt by researchers when they discover new particles or when they understand their new properties. Furthermore, it would be desirable for the games to also provide enjoyment for players with very different ages, backgrounds and knowledge level for variation in the rules and of the considered properties of these particles. Moreover the methods to play these cards provide a realistic simulation of the rules that are generally accepted as basic laws in the interactions of elementary particles.

There are prior art arithmetic card games, for example U.S. Pat. No. 4,281,835 to Seiden, which discloses a simple design and manufactured set of playing cards with numbers on the playing card faces and mathematical symbols on the instruction cards, for amusement and instruction in basic arithmetic operations. U.S. Pat. No. 6,305,687 to Pollock et al., teaches a “lottery-type” game of chance for one or more players, which combines a lottery-type game of chance with a BINGO-type game. Other known card games include U.S. Pat. No. 6,276,940 to White, which teaches children the alphabet utilizing a deck of one hundred eighteen cards; each card is associated with a single letter of the alphabet that is displayed on one side of the card. The frequency of cards containing each letter being roughly the same as the frequency with which each letter occurs in the English language. U.S. Pat. No. 7,950,665 to Treloar, discloses a method for playing a game, involving the steps of determining a combination number; dealing to at least one player at least three cards from a deck to make a hand, and the deck having at least one group of cards sequentially numbered from one to thirteen; and providing a reward to the player for each combination the player makes of the cards equaling the combination number.

However, currently there are no such devices known to represent elementary particles that can be held in the hand of the interested persons. For example the strongly interacting Quark Gluon Plasma has just been discovered at RHIC in 2010 and its existence confirmed at CERN LHC in 2011. However some inventions related to how to teach the alphabet or how to teach basic arithmetics also aim at simple representation of complex properties. The representation of the color SU(3) symmetry of quarks and anti-quarks in an educational card game is also unprecedented. Currently there are no known solutions that could empower and teach elementary particle physics to laypersons in the form of a card game.

More about elementary particle and quark matter physics can be found on the following sites: Wikipedia sites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryon; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepton; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meson; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QCD_matter; Brookhaven National Laboratory, Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider http://www.bnl.gov/RHIC; http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/pr_display.asp?prid=05-38; http://www.bnl.gov/rhic/news2/news.asp?a=1074&t=pr; and http://www.bnl.gov/rhic/news2/news.asp?a=2175&t=today: CERN, European Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics, Large Hadron Collider http://www.cern.ch/LHC; Fermi National Laboratory, The Science of Matter, Space and Time; http://www.fnal.gov/pub/inquiring/matter/madeofindex.html; Cosmic Showers from Particle Data Group,http://pdg.lbl.gov/2008/reviews/cosmicrayrpp.pdf. Some Recommended Animations: An animated .pptx file, demonstrating the Quark Matter Card Game is at: http://indico.cerach/materialDisplay.py?contribId=20&sessionId=7&materialId=slides&confId=113717; Animations of Quark Matter formation in Gold-Gold collisions at RHIC is available from, http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/WWW/software/luxor/ani/; Links and information about our Quark Matter Card Game—Elementary Particles On Your Own: https://sites.google.com/site/particlescardgame/; and Youtube video about the Quark Matter Card Game (in Hungarian, with English subtitles): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_—04hNdTxtuw.

SUMMARY

The disclosed card game advantageously fills a need by providing a Quark Matter Card Game and methods of playing with cards that represent elementary particles which provides first-hand and enjoyable experience for laypersons such as for example, children, students and researchers to have a hands-on experience of particle and high energy heavy ion or nuclear physics using simple and inexpensive tools. According to one embodiment, the disclosed card game is directed to a deck for playing an educational game, the deck comprises a plurality of card-like devices having a face bearing a representation of an elementary particle.

According to another embodiment, the disclosed card game is directed to a game comprising a set of representations of elementary particles; and a body of rules for combining the representations, wherein the rules conform to rules for the combination of elementary particles according to the Standard Model of particle physics.

According to yet another embodiment, the disclosed card game is directed to a method of playing a game, the method comprising randomizing a set of representations of elementary particles; distributing at least a subset of the representations to a position, the position belonging to either a player or a central region; and combining the representations according to rules that conform to rules for the combination of elementary particles according to the Standard Model of particle physics.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The patent application file contains at least one drawing executed in color. Copies of this patent or patent application publication with color drawings will be provided by the Office upon request and payment of the necessary fee.

FIG. 1 is a chart of the Summary of the Elementary Particles of the Standard Model.

FIG. 2 illustrates game cards that represent selected particles of the Standard Model.

FIG. 3 illustrates game cards representing anti-particles.

FIG. 4 illustrates that mesons can be formed from quark anti-quark pairs, with colors and matching anti-colors. Baryons are formed from three quarks with different colors, and anti-baryons are formed by three anti-quarks with different anti-colors.

FIG. 5 is an illustration of each player placing 4 cards in front of them (called a window) and tries to put these cards to the middle window, according to the rules of packing. Thus, the players first fill the middle window with two quarks in the center and two leptons at the side, after that each player uses only 4 cards of his or her remaining 31 at the start of the game.

FIG. 6 is an illustration of cards where the players can say ANTI in one of the three cases: a quark-antiquark pair is in the middle of the middle window, with correct color-anticolor combinations (all the three colors are represented).

FIG. 7 is an illustration of cards where the players can say ANTI in one of the three cases: a lepton-antilepton pair is at the sides of the middle window.

FIG. 8 is an illustration of cards where the players can say ANTI in one of the three cases: all the four particle cards in the middle window represent anti-particles.

FIG. 9 is a demonstration of a typical initial situation in the card game ANTI illustrating the first configuration from a series of six figures.

FIG. 10 is a demonstration of a typical progression in the card game ANTI illustrating the second configuration from a series of six figures.

FIG. 11 is a demonstration of a typical progression in the card game ANTI illustrating the third configuration from a series of six figures.

FIG. 12 is a demonstration of a typical progression in the card game ANTI illustrating the fourth configuration from a series of six figures.

FIG. 13 is a demonstration of a typical progression in the card game ANTI illustrating the fifth configuration from a series of six figures.

FIG. 14 is a demonstration of a typical progression in the card game ANTI illustrating the sixth configuration from a series of six figures.

FIG. 15 is an illustration of the initial configuration for the card game Quark Matter.

FIG. 16 is an illustration of weak decay of a neutron as a diagram, as well as its representation with the Particle Cards of the Quark Matter Card Game

FIG. 17 is an illustration of a Cosmic Shower generated by a cosmic proton.

FIG. 18 is a modeling of the cosmic shower of FIG. 17 with particle cards.

FIG. 19 illustrates leptons cards from the electron and muon families. The top row stands for leptons with lepton number +1, the bottom row corresponds to anti-leptons with lepton number −1. The left 4 cards stand for the members of the electron family or generation, the right 4 cards form the muon family.

FIG. 20 a depicts a card representing an electron (e⁻); FIG. 20b depicts a card representing a positron (e⁺); FIG. 20c depicts a card representing a muon; FIG. 20d depicts a card representing an electron-antineutrino; FIG. 20e depicts a card representing a muon-neutrino; FIG. 20f depicts a card representing a red u-quark; FIG. 20g depicts a card representing a green d-quark; FIG. 20h depicts a card representing a blue s-quark; FIG. 20i depicts a card representing an anti-green anti-u quark; FIG. 20_j depicts a card representing an anti-red anti-d quark; FIG. 20k depicts a card representing an anti-blue anti-s quark.

FIG. 21 illustrates a complete set of cards disclosed in the present card game.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The present invention provides a new type of deck of cards and provides a plurality of new card games with the newly provided deck, attempting to make a bridge between elementary particles, quark matter, entertainment and self-education. The cards in these games represent the smallest known constituents of our world: each card corresponds to one of the elementary particles, the set of cards forming a deck.

A plurality of games are described herein. In each of these games, the rules correspond to laws of Nature, sometimes modified corresponding to human nature as well. With the help of these games, a player can develop a better understanding of some of the elementary particles and their properties, in particular those of the quarks and leptons. An object of the present card game is to entertain the players, while also disseminating information and knowledge at the same time. More precisely, the game is designed to convey that playful, beautiful and happy impression that researchers feel at the time, when they first realize a new and beautiful interdependence or discovery. To be able to win the games, players have to realize similar relations between elementary particle cards, that occur during the course of these games.

These games can be played from age of 5 years old up, at ever increasing difficulty and complexity. Prototypes of these games have been tested with the help of laypersons of various backgrounds, including preschoolers, primary, middle school and university students, PhD students, researchers and administrators, architects, engineers, farmers, and tractor drivers as well as pensioners. Some of these games have been played by parents and children as well as grandparents and grandchildren. Actually, the only thing that is needed to start to play these games is the knowledge of some colors, namely red, green and blue, in addition to black and white. Of course you also need some desire for adventures as well as some free time to play.

The card game will address the interest of people with completely different backgrounds. The card game also provides an introduction to particle and nuclear physics for those middle school, B. Sc, M. Sc, or Ph. D students, who are motivated to learn more and to develop a better understanding of elementary particles and their interactions. This part summarizes the scientific background and we also provide directions for further reading about atoms, elementary particles and the Standard Model.

Some of the games disclosed herein can be played by two persons, others can be played by any number of players. Depending on your level of understanding and experience, one may play similar kind of games at different, increasingly more complex levels of difficulty. It is contemplated that several people are related to scientists who work in world-wide collaborations at big colliders like RHIC or LHC. These persons include administrators, safety guards, cleaners, engineers, neighbors, who work or just live close to some more or less mysterious-looking research centers. Most probably they have heard about elementary particles, and many of them have seen some animations with these particles too, but it is quite a different feeling to have these particles in your hand, or, even to put them into your pocket. The card game disclosed herein makes it possible to get such a hands-on experience and to have fun with elementary particles, to improve your understanding of their properties and most importantly, also to generate some delight while playing with them.

In order to understand the card games, it is necessary to understand some key physical concepts that motivated the creation of these games. Supposedly, we all know that the world is built up from molecules and atoms. But the atoms—despite that their name translates to English as “indivisible”—do in fact feature complicated internal structure and are divisible: electrons with negative charge make up an electron cloud, that fills most of the volume of the atoms, and in the center of each atom one finds a relatively tiny but heavy atomic nucleus, which consists of protons and neutrons. Although protons repel each other electrically due to their positive charge, protons as well as neutrons are held together by a strong, nuclear force, which overcomes the electric repulsion of protons.

In the 20th century, physicists discovered several other particles, so the number of elementary particles had increased quite a lot, to the range of thousands. But so many particles cannot all be elementary in the true sense of this word, physicists had thought, so they tried to figure out a classification, which can describe these particles and their measured properties. So physicists discovered a simple model, that can explain the properties of all the observed, strongly interacting particles. This simple model is called the quark model, in which the strongly interacting particles or hadrons are composed of smaller, hypothetical particles, called quarks. To form a strongly interacting particle, these quarks have to be combined—as free quarks have not yet been observed directly. The quarks are held together by the strong, nuclear force, which is carried by other particles, the so called gluons (from the word glue). Initially, the quark model was considered only as a useful technique of particle classification, but later the existence of quarks was verified indirectly, by scattering electrons off a target of protons. In nature, quarks can combine in two ways: three quarks can combine to form a baryon (and three anti-quarks form an anti-baryon), and a quark and an anti-quark can combine to form a meson.

The following concepts and their definitions are utilized in the disclosed games:

Particles and antiparticles: Every particle has its own antiparticle that has the same mass, but opposite quantum numbers such as electric charge, lepton charge, baryon number and so on. For example, the antiparticle of an electron (e⁻) is a positron (e⁺). Some charge neutral particles are their own antiparticles, such as the photons (also called as the γ-particles).

Annihilation: In a collision of a particle and its anti-particle, they can annihilate and be destructed totally, while their energy and momenta are conserved by the emission of other particle-antiparticle pairs, for example photon pairs.

Baryons: Baryons are bound states of three quarks that satisfy color neutrality, for example a red, green and blue quark can form a baryon. Anti-baryons can be formed by three anti-quarks, with anti-red, anti-blue and anti-green colors.

Baryon charge: Each baryon carries a baryon charge of 1. The baryon number of anti-baryons is −1. Mesons have zero baryon charge.

Conservation laws: These empirically verified laws of Nature state, that certain quantities such as total energy, momentum or charge are independent of time in any closed system. For example, the conservation law of energy states that the energy of an isolated system is constant in time, or, in other words, energy is a conserved quantity.

Conservation of baryon charge: This conservation law states that the sum of the baryon charges of a set of particles is the same before and after any elementary particle interaction.

Conservation of electric charge: This conservation law states that the sum of the electric charges of a set of particles is the same before and after any elementary particle interaction.

Conservation of lepton charge: The conservation of lepton charge states that during the interaction of particles the lepton charge is conserved. Moreover, not just the overall lepton charge is conserved, but the electron-, muon-, and tau lepton charge is conserved separately in the Standard Model of elementary particle physics, if the neutrino masses are negligibly small.

Color charge: Color charge is an important property of quarks and gluons in the theoretical description of strong interactions. Color charge is somewhat analogous to the more familiar electric charge, however, electric charge can have only positive and negative values, while color charge can change along three color charge directions: red, blue and green (and their anti-color directions: anti-red, anti-blue and anti-green). According to the theory of strong interactions, Quantum Chromo Dynamics, individual quarks cannot be observed as they have to form color neutral states, where the red, green and blue color quantum numbers are balanced to color neutral, “white” states. For example, a red, a blue and a green quark can form a color-neutral, white baryon. It's important to note that these color charges have similar symmetry properties as actual colors, but they do not represent any optical property of the quarks. Colors in this context refer to the property of quarks: by building a particle out of quarks, only colorless (white) states can be realized and detected in Nature.

Leptons: Matter type particles that do not interact strongly are called leptons. For example, electrons, muons, tau-particles, and their corresponding neutrinos are leptons.

Lepton charge: Physicists have associated quantum numbers, so called lepton numbers to these leptons. The lepton numbers are 1 for the electrons, muons and tau-particles, while they are −1 for anti-leptons (such as positron, anti-muon, anti-tau, electron-antineutrino, etc.), and 0 for non-leptons (such as quarks, or bound states of quarks like protons, or neutrons).

Hadrons: Hadron is a common name for baryons and mesons, corresponding to strongly interacting, color neutral, directly observable particles, bound states of quarks.

Mesons: These particles are bound states of quarks and anti-quarks, with opposite color charge (red-anti-red colors for example). Their baryon number and lepton number is zero, however, they may carry electric charge and interact strongly.

Part of the goal of the present Quark Matter card game and other card games with elementary particles is to help the player in understanding these and other concepts, and this process will be quite natural after the player is familiarized with them by playing the cards.

FIG. 1 illustrates the elementary particles of the Standard Model. It can be considered as the periodic table of particle physics. Quarks are denoted with a green background, and we may notice the quark generations at the columns. The u and d quarks form the first generation. These two quarks make up a large part of the material world around us. In the second generation (or family) one can find the c and the s quarks, while the third family consists of the t and the b quarks. The origin of the elementary particles chart is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:StandardModel_of_Elementary_Particles.svghttp://upload. This figure is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License, detailed at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.)

Every quark has its own anti-quark, usually denoted by a bar or an over-line. For example the anti-quark of a u quark is the anti-u quark, denoted by ū, and the anti-quark of the d is the anti-d quark, denoted by d. Leptons are indicated with a purple background. They are also members of the above reviewed three generations, so there is one family for the electron, another one for the muon, and a third one for the tau-particle. Every generation has its own neutrino as well. Quarks and leptons are matter-like particles, they cannot occupy the same quantum states due to their half-integer spins. These matter-like particles are named fermions. Force-transmitting particles carry integer spins, they are called bosons (indicated with a turquoise background of FIG. 1) and they “like each other” and can occupy the same quantum states. With the help of particles from this table, all the currently known, already discovered particles can be reproduced.

We know that only three generations of particles exist and that that nature did not also include other quarks and leptons because of the LEP (Large Electron-Positron) Collider, a large particle accelerator and collider that operated at the particle and nuclear physics centre CERN at the French-Swiss border from 1989 until 2000. LEP physicists measured the number of light neutrinos (corresponding to the number of generations) to be 2.994±0.012, consistently with the Standard Model value of 3.

In FIG. 2 selected particles and their card representation are illustrated. These cards are included in the game, and show how to build some of the strongly interacting particles called hadrons out of quarks. From among the quarks, are selected the most frequent u and d quarks as well as the s quarks, from among the leptons are included the electron and the muon family. Color has been added—color for quarks, and black-and-white cards are used for leptons that do not participate in the strong interactions. FIG. 2 is a modified version of FIG. 1, where the most frequent, selected elementary particles of FIG. 1 are indicated by cards. This figure, similarly to FIG. 1, is also a subject to the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License, detailed at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.

Also included is a set of anti-particles and their card representation, as illustrated in FIG. 3. These include anti-u, anti-d, anti-s quarks, positrons, positive muons, and the anti-neutrinos from the electron and the muon family of leptons. Note that we use anti-colors for anti-quarks.

In FIG. 3 an anti-red color is represented by a combination of green and blue, as according to the principle of color mixing, adding red color to a combination of blue and green makes the resulting color neutral, or white.

Initially, in order to play the disclosed games, it is not necessary to remember all the names of these particles. However, it is essential to observe that valid hadrons are color neutral. This can be reached by combining red, green, blue quarks (or anti-red, anti-green, anti-blue colored anti-quarks) as well as quark anti-quark pairs that have to contain valid color anti-color combination too.

Quark Matter and Other Card Games

As shown in FIG. 21, the disclosed invention utilizes a deck of particle cards that contains the following: 12 cards for u quarks (also called up quarks) 12 cards for d quarks (also called down quarks) 9 cards for s quarks (also called strange quarks) 3 cards for ū-anti-quarks (called anti-u, or anti-up quarks) 3 cards for d anti-quarks (called anti-d, or anti-down quarks) 3 cards for s anti-quarks (called anti-strange quarks) 3 cards for e⁻ (called electrons) 3 cards for e⁺ (called positrons) 3 cards for μ⁻ (called muon) 3 cards for μ⁺ (called anti-muon) 3 cards for ν_e (called electron-neutrino) 3 cards for ν_e (called electron-antineutrino) 3 cards for ν_μ (called muon-neutrino) 3 cards for ν_μ (called muon-antineutrino). In this optional realization of the game, the total number of particle cards is 66. The representation of elementary particles of the Standard Model may use three basic colors, for example the optical red, green and blue colors, to represent the color SU(3) symmetry of quarks and at the same time using a pair of these colors (for example, red and green) to represent the anti-color of anti-quarks in educational and entertaining card games.

The playing cards representing quarks and anti-quarks are colored, while leptons and anti-leptons are represented by black-and-white cards. The deck is constructed in such a way that in the Quark Matter Card Game each of the quarks and the anti-quarks disappear from the original plasma state so that none of them remains in the plasma at the end of the game.

Among other things, it is an object of the present card game to provide Quark Matter Card Game and methods of playing with cards that represent elementary particles that is the first to solve the aforementioned problem of explaining the results of very expensive fundamental research to laypersons in a fun and understandable manner, so that people may have hands-on experience with elementary particles on their own.

The disclosed invention now will be described more fully hereinafter with reference to the accompanying drawings, which are intended to be read in conjunction with both this summary, the detailed description and any preferred and/or particular embodiments specifically discussed or otherwise disclosed. This invention may, however, be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the embodiments set forth herein; rather, these embodiments are provided by way of illustration only and so that this disclosure will be thorough, complete and will fully convey the full scope of the invention to those skilled in the art.

Described herein below are four selected games that correspond to the elementary particle cards described above. The main motivation was to find those games that are the best to play in practice.

Before turning to the games, hadrons are formed, with mesons and baryons by taking into account the concept of color neutrality.

In FIG. 4 mesons are formed from quark anti-quark pairs, with colors and matching anti-colors. Baryons are formed from three quarks with different colors, and anti-baryons are formed by three anti-quarks with different anti-colors. See, also Brief Description of the Drawings, FIG. 4, supra.

Game 1: Anti

Number of players: 2.

Object of the game: to quickly get rid of particle cards.

Level of this game: can be played from elementary level on

Course of the game: after shuffling the cards, both players get about half of the deck (so they get around 33 cards). The players must not see these cards. As presented in FIG. 5, the game starts with putting 4 cards into middle (common cards), 2 quarks/anti-quarks and 2 leptons/anti-leptons to the sides. (Each player places a quark/anti-quark and a lepton/anti-lepton to the middle.)

Then the game starts: as illustrated in FIG. 5, each player places 4 cards in front of them (called a window) and tries to put these cards to the middle, according to the rules of packing. Given that the middle window was already filled: both players placed one quark or anti-quark to the middle of the middle window and a lepton or an anti-lepton to the sides of the middle window, both a players use only 4 cards of his or her 31 at the beginning.

There is no pre-determined sequential order between the players, so one can put cards in rapid succession. That means that the quicker players can use the opportunity better, and probably have more of a chance to win the game. However, attention and realizing special constellations of the cards is also important, so players who are slower in motion but faster in recognition can change the course of the game, by saying “ANTI” at certain constellations of cards. If they recognize the situation correctly, the other player picks up all the cards in the middle.

Players can say ANTI in one of the following three cases:

FIG. 6 demonstrates when a player can say “ANTI” when there is a quark-anti-quark pair in the middle, which can fit together (so if there is a u ū, d d or s s quark anti-quark pair with appropriate color and anti-color in the middle).

FIG. 7 demonstrates when a player can say “ANTI” when there is a lepton and its anti-lepton at the edges of the middle row, for example, an e⁺ e⁻, μ⁺ μ⁻, the ν_e ν_e or the ν_μ ν_μ combinations.

FIG. 8 demonstrates when a player can say “ANTI” when all of the particles in the middle row are antiparticles, for example in the case when an e⁺ dsν combination appears.

The three aforementioned “ANTI” cases are important in this game: the player that realizes them first can make the other player collect all the cards in the common, middle part.

If both players happen to say ANTI at the same time, neither one has to take up the cards. If one of the players says ANTI at an incorrect, non-ANTI constellation of the cards, then he or she has to pick up all the cards in the middle. However, if the constellation was a correct ANTI situation, his or her opponent has to pick up all the cards in the middle.

During the game the players can complete their window up to 4 cards. If nobody can put down a new card according to the rules, then both players put one of their cards from their own pack to the common cards at the same time, without regards to other rules, to continue the game.

The Rules of Packing:

Each of the players can put one card at each occasion to the middle row, using only one of his or her hands.

Concerning quarks and anti-quarks, the rules of packing are as follows:

One can put a quark to another quark if the quarks have different colors (a reflection on color charge). Thus the same colors cannot appear on subsequent quark cards, for example red can be followed by green, or blue quark.

One can put a quark to an anti-quark if their color charge is opposite (so for example if the quark is ‘red’, the player can place it to a ‘blue-green’ or anti-red anti-quark).

Anti-quarks can be placed on quarks if they have opposite color charge (for example if the anti-quark is ‘red-green’, it can be placed on a ‘blue’ quark).

Concerning leptons and antileptons:

Players can place a lepton to its anti-lepton (or, an anti-lepton to its lepton), corresponding to the conservation of both the lepton number and electric charge. For example, an electron e⁻ can be placed on a positron e⁺ and vice versa.

Players can place a lepton to an anti-lepton if they are from the same family or generation (conservation of the lepton number). For example, an electron anti-neutrino can be placed on an electron.

One can place a lepton to an anti-lepton if they have opposite electric charge (conservation of electric charge). For example, an electron e⁻ can be placed on a positive muon μ⁺.

To sum up, the rules of packing take color charge in consideration in the case of quarks and anti-quarks, while the conservation of lepton number and the conservation of electric charge is taken into account in the case of leptons and their anti-particles.

The winner of this game is the one who can get rid of his or her cards earlier. Experience indicates that in this game ANTI, students have a large chance to win even if they play against researchers or professors of physics.

Note that this game ANTI was modeled upon a popular card game called “Speed” that is usually played with Hungarian or French cards. To illustrate the course of the game, we describe here an example too. Note, however, that the best way to learn ANTI is by playing it.

A demonstration of the ANTI-card game with particles is as follows:

FIG. 9 indicates a typical initial situation. Two players sit face to face, the top row is indicating the visible cards of one of the players (A) while the bottom four cards are the visible cards of the other player (B).

The middle row is the collection of common cards (C).

The top player, (A) quickly realizes that he or she can move a red u quark to the green d quark in the common cards in the middle row, and makes this move.

FIG. 10 is illustrative of the game progressing wherein the bottom player (B) realizes that he or she can move an electron neutrino to an electron anti-neutrino in the middle row (C). At the same time, the top player (A) fills his or her row to contain four cards, as indicated in the subsequent figure.

As the game further progresses, FIG. 11 depicts top player (A) puts an anti-blue anti-u quark to the blue u quark in the common row (C). The bottom player (B) fills his or her visible cards by pulling out a new card from his pack that he keeps in his or her hands or just next to his row. These cards are facing down the table, only the cards in rows (A), (B) and (C) are turned face up.

FIG. 12 is illustrative of the progression of the game, as the bottom player (B) fills the empty place in his row with a green u quark and moves a muon to an anti-muon in the middle row (C). In the meantime the top player (A) searches for a new card to fill the empty hole in his or her row.

FIG. 13 illustrates that while the top player (A) filled his or her row, the bottom player completed the move with the muon to middle row (C) and realizes another possibility and quickly moves his or her positron to the top of an electron neutrino in the middle row.

FIG. 14 illustrates the bottom player starts to fill his row (B) and realizes that if he moves the blue u quark to the top of the red u quark in the middle row (C), he then will be able to say ANTI and make player (A) collect all the cards from the middle row (C).

The continuation of this game depends now on the interplay between both players. If (A) does not recognize the ANTI situation, he or she will have to pick up all the cards from row (C). However, if he or she happens to realize the ANTI relation earlier than (B), and then (A) can make the other player (B) to collect all the cards from (C).

Game 2: Quark Matter

Number of players: arbitrary.

Object of the game: to detect as many particles as possible and as quickly as possible from the Quark Matter—the perfect fluid of quarks, by going through its time evolution.

The course of the game: Illustrated in FIG. 15, the players put the thoroughly shuffled pack to the middle then make a small area heap from them—with the particle sides of the cards, in a face up position. The stock of cards represents the formation of Quark Matter early in the game. Initially, neutrinos leave the plasma undetected, so the players pick them out first, but they do not get scores for it and can take neutrinos one by one. Then we detect the dilepton enhancement, generated by the enormous initial temperature. These dileptons are detected as they escape from the quark-gluon plasma without strong interactions. The players refer to this by searching for lepton-anti-lepton pairs (e⁺ e− or μ⁺ μ⁻ pairs). Then we arrive to the phase of hadronization. Players form various baryons and mesons from the quarks and antiquarks left in the middle, until all the quarks are used up.

The Quark Matter card game can be played at beginner, intermediate or advanced levels:

On a beginner level, the players do not know the name of the hadrons that they form of quarks and anti-quarks. The only concern is to identify neutrinos, then lepton pairs, and then assure color neutrality when forming hadrons—players can score points (given by the number of collected charged lepton and quark cards) even without naming these hadrons.

On an intermediate level, the goal is the get to know these names, so players can use a table of the particles to learn these names during the game. In this game mode, players follow each other clockwise, forming one hadron each time as the game proceeds, and players have to name the hadron that they have formed. If they cannot tell the name, they are passed by. The game has no winner at this level, as we mentioned that the goal is to get familiar with the name of the hadrons.

On an advanced level, the players know the name of the particles (or the name of many of them). In this case, there is no order between the players, and they can pull out lepton pairs then hadrons as quickly as possible, without waiting for one another. They have to collect the lepton pairs or the hadrons face up before them, separating the valid card combinations. When there is no more card in the middle, the players show their lepton pairs and hadrons one by one and tell their names. If it's correct then the player gets the points, given by the total number of cards that were used to form that hadron. The winner is that player, who has collected the largest number of lepton pairs and hadrons. Players can also agree on “robbing,” if the given player was not able to name the hadron or the charged lepton pair that he or she formed, but someone else is the first to name that hadron or lepton pair correctly, this other person can ‘rob’ the named cards and can get the scores for them (collecting these cards and scoring one point for each charged lepton or quark or anti-quark cards).

In each case, all the quarks should disappear and be confined to hadrons by the end of each game. One of the interesting aspects of this set is that a mathematical theorem guarantees the disappearance of all the quarks to hadrons at the end of this game. In some cases it may happen, that you still find some quarks in the middle of the table that cannot be combined to hadrons. This is a certain sign that someone was cheating i.e. not combing quarks correctly, provided that the initial heap of cards was including all the 66 cards of the deck.

Game 3: Let's Detect

Number of players: 2.

Object of the game: the “detection” of particle decays.

Level of this game: advanced.

The course of the game: The two players sit facing each other. The deck of cards is being divided into two—approximately equal—parts (as in the game ANTI). Then the players put 5-5 cards in front of them. By using these cards (including the 5 cards of the opponent) one can form decays.

The course of the game: The two players sit facing each other. The deck of cards is being divided into two—approximately equal—parts (as in the game ANTI). Then the players put 5-5 cards in front of them. By using these cards (including the 5 cards of the opponent) one can form decays.

Table 1 summarizes those decays that can be utilized in the game “Let's Detect!,” and FIG. 16 presents an illustration of the cards that would represent the second decay presented in Table 1, which would be worth 14 points. These decays were selected from among a much larger number of physically possible decays of elementary particle decays. The scores for the given decay are indicated on the right hand side.

The arrow in the first column of Table 1 indicates that the particle on the left hand side of the arrow may decay to a plurality of other particles (under given circumstances) that stand on the right hand side of the arrow. Note also that Table 2 and Table 3 lists the quark and anti-quark contents of the hadrons that are used in this particular game. These can be used as auxiliary tables for this particular game, but after some time the players are expected to learn the quark contents by themselves. Due to this reason this game is the most advanced from among the games described herein.

TABLE 1
Decays            Points
p+ → n0 + e+ + ve 14
n0 → p+ + e− + ve 14
π− → μ− + vμ      7
π− → e− + ve      7
π+ → μ+ + vμ      7
π+ → e+ + ve      7
K− → μ− + vμ      7
K+ → μ+ + vμ      7
Ω− → Λ0 + K−      21
Ω− → Ξ0 + π−      21
μ− → e− + ve + vμ 7
μ+ → e+ + ve + vμ 7

Tables 2 and 3 indicate how the hadrons utilized in Table 1 can be formed from quarks and anti-quarks for the purpose of the Quark Matter Card Game.

The goal is to make the decays listed in Table 1 faster than the opponent, because only one player can form a decay (or part of a decay) in one round. To have priority one only has to touch the cards. Thus, only one decay (or part of a decay) can be formed in a round. (Forming a part of a decay means to form and tell the name at least two of the particles that take part in that particular decay.) The players put the formed decay (or part of a decay) to a conspicuous place. If nobody formed a decay/(part of a decay) or completed a previously formed part of a decay after some seconds, the players take up the cards, shuffle them with the others, then start the next round. The winner of the game is the player who is the first to reach 21 points.

If the player who touched the cards first, cannot form a decay or some part of a decay, or cannot continue even one of his previous decays, he or she is going to lose 1 point on every second occasion. (Thus we can prevent one from continuously take the initiative.) FIG. 16 illustrates one particular decay, the second line of Table 1, realized with the help of quark matter/elementary particle cards. All the decays that are allowed in this game and the corresponding points are shown in Table 1.

Game 4: Cosmic Showers

Number of players: arbitrary.

Object of the game: to create as big a cosmic shower as possible, modeling the actual development of cosmic air showers.

Level of the game: intermediate or advanced

The rules and the course of the game: A “cosmic proton”, i.e. a card combination containing a red, green and blue colored (uud) configuration is selected and put in the middle as the initiator of a shower. We imagine that this proton has a lot of energy so in practice, when it collides with the atoms and molecules of the atmosphere, it can generate a huge avalanche of particles called cosmic showers. As the incoming energy is nearly unlimited, formation of the new particles is limited only by the conservation of electric, lepton, baryon and color charge. FIG. 17 illustrates the an photographer's view of the structure of an actual cosmic shower, as it develops in the evening sky. FIG. 18 is indicating the same cosmic shower as represented with the help of the presently disclosed card game's elementary particle cards including quarks, leptons and their anti-particles.

The rest of cards are mixed and put to the middle of the table in a pack. The shower can grow following the rules of conservation of electric charge, color, lepton number and baryon number. In cosmic showers, only hadrons or leptons may propagate. Thus quarks have to be combined to hadrons, before they can be added as new legs of the shower. Also, particle decays that satisfy the conservation laws are all allowed. The goal of the game is to build up as big of a cosmic shower as possible, by using up all the cards during the course of the game. The size of the cosmic shower is given by the number of the branching (or, the number of “legs”) in the shower, as illustrated in FIG. 18. If the branching was possible only due to a collision with an atom, or, with a molecule in the atmosphere, a card with face down has to be placed next to this branching, and the players are not allowed to inspect this card. This card can be pulled out from the pack. This unknown card indicates, that at such an interaction, particle-antiparticle pairs can be created, or any event that is in agreement with the conservation laws, may happen. In case of particle decays in agreement with conservation laws, it is not necessary to add such a down-turned card. Players can collaborate as well as compete in developing these showers as well as their skills.

On an intermediate level, the focus is on understanding and practicing the development of cosmic showers, so every player can add new legs and new particles to the shower. Valid new lines contain hadrons or leptons, and at every vertex (new leg creation) the conservation laws have to be satisfied. When this stage goes well, then the players can move to the advanced level.

On an advanced level, the players move sequentially (for example, they follow each other in clockwise order). Every player gets 5 cards to start with. The rest of the cards are put into a well-mixed pack in the middle of the table. The players in turn pull out a card, and then either they can add a new leg to the shower, or the player retains the cards in his or her hand and says pass. This way, the players build the cosmic shower sequentially, one after the other. If a new leg is added, the person who created it gains as many points, as many new branches he or she created, corresponding to the number of new hadrons and leptons at that branch. It is best to record the scores after each step. One point is awarded a player for generating each new leg or branch of the shower and in conformance with the rules of local conservation laws. For example, FIG. 18 describes a cosmic shower with 16 legs or 16 branches, hence 16 points are distributed among the players. After the stack is used up, no new cards can be pulled from the middle pack, so every player has to lay his or her cards down to the table. The sequential order of players is still maintained, but now any player can take away any cards from any other player (card robbery). Scoring is recorded as before, after every step. The game ends, when the shower cannot be continued with maintaining the local conservation laws. The winner is the person who generated most of the branches (or “legs”) for the shower.

FIG. 19 indicates an arrangement of the leptons in the Quark Matter Card Game, that was found to be particularly effective when teaching lepton charges and particle-antiparticle relations between leptons. On the most basic level, even small children can realize that anti-particles have an extra line in their symbol, as compared to the corresponding particle. This they can learn even if they cannot yet read. Illustrative of the cards used herein, FIGS. 20a-20e, show the typical leptons from the Quark Matter Card Games including an electron, a positron, a muon, an electron-antineutrino and a muon-neutrino, respectively. These are colored black-and-white to indicate that they do not participate in the strong interactions, that are mediated by the abstract SU(3) color and represented by the optical colors. FIG. 20f-20h indicate the representation of u, d and s quarks using red, green and blue colors. All the quarks can be produced in all the three colors.

FIGS. 20 i-20k indicate an anti-green anti-u, anti-red anti-d and anti-s quarks, using two colors to represent the anti-color of the missing third quarks. Each anti-colored anti-quark appears once in the default deck of cards.

Recommendations and Teaching Methods

Practical methods that have been found useful when teaching these games to various groups including pre-school children, or laypersons who have not even heard about quarks and leptons.

It is easy to recognize, that one needs some quite complex knowledge about elementary particles to play these cards, given that the cards carry physical meaning and the rules of the games obey certain laws of physics. Learning these rules, even in a playful manner, is not an unconditionally simple task. Even the names like quarks and leptons, baryons, hadrons and mesons are sometimes terrifying for non-physicists or for children, not mentioning what may happen if the conservation laws are enlisted and all the physical relationships are taken into account during even the simplest game ANTI.

Experience indicates that the most important consideration for playing the disclosed games corresponds to the age of the group that is being taught. Basically, ANTI and Quark Matter can be taught to children of pre-school age, with some simplification. It is not possible to teach particle decays to everybody, different age groups require different teaching methods. It has been found that the youngest students learn these games for the fun of it, their goal is just entertainment. As they grow up, more and more details can be revealed and this way this card game becomes an entertaining tool of self-education and teaching.

Pre-school age: it is not recommended to try to fill the minds of young children with strange names of particles or particle groups. Basically, they cannot even read, however, they can distinguish the cards by their colors. For them, it is quite entertaining to play with a simplified version of ANTI. The essence of color charge can be taught to young children. Instead of including leptons, use the two quark places in the middle of the game ANTI. Then the colors of quarks only needs to be considered. For example, if a card is red, then it can be followed by any other quark card, that does not contain the red color, as it can be followed by a green, a blue or an anti-red card which has a combined green/blue color. Initially, it is better not to look for the ANTI configuration, until they learn how to consider colors. After becoming familiar with the colors, and their possible sequences, ANTI configuration of a quark anti-quark pair can be taught by observing that in this case, the letters are the same and all the three colors are present. Although young children cannot read, they can recognize, if the letters are the same or not.

Primary school, age group of 7-10 years: Children in this group are already familiar with letters. They are capable of playing ANTI with leptons included. For them, the biggest difficulty is to differentiate among the various zig-zags on the cards (Greek letters for example). However, the essential point for teaching is simple: there are leptons and anti-leptons. A card stands for an anti-lepton, if it contains one more line as compared to its pair, which is a normal lepton. The best method is to ask them to collect all black-and-white cards, and ask them to identify lepton-anti-lepton pairs. They were able to differentiate these families, when the cards illustrated in FIG. 19 are used to explain them: Leptons from the electron and muon families. The top row stands for leptons with lepton number +1, the bottom row corresponds to anti-leptons with lepton number −1. The left 4 cards stand for the members of the electron family or generation, the right 4 cards form the muon family.

Teachers may explain that neutrinos are very rigorous particles, they carry the sign of their families and they (within the Standard Model) do not mix with leptons from the other family. So an electron can be followed by an electron-antineutrino that can be followed by an electron neutrino or an electron in this card game. However, electrons and muons carry electric charge, so an electron can be followed not only by a positron but also by a positive muon, when considering the conservation of the electric charge. They can observe that a + sign has one more line as the − sign, so on the above FIG. 4 anti-leptons have one extra line as compared to leptons.

When teaching ANTI to this age group, it is recommended to teach them playing with quarks first, then with leptons only, but in each case, using the ANTI situations. They enjoy a lot when they can make the other party to collect all the cards from the middle, in particular if that person is their teacher. After they become familiar with both quarks and leptons, they can learn the full ANTI game as well. In fact, they will enjoy this game a lot, in particular after they have learned the rules of packing one card after the other in the middle row.

Primary school, age group of 10-14 years: In Hungary, this is the age group that starts to learn elementary physics and chemistry. They learn about atoms, electrons, protons and neutrons. So it is more easy to explain them what are the quarks and leptons. It can be taught to this age group that the electric charge of the quarks and ask them to combine colored u and d quarks to get a proton or a neutron. The concepts of baryons and mesons may also be mentioned to them. They can learn playing ANTI very well and are also able to play the game called Quark Matter.

Secondary (middle) school, age group of 14-18 years: This age group has a more serious background in physics and chemistry. They can learn more complicated relationships. They are able to learn how to combine quarks to form kaons, pions and other particles and they can understand the conservation laws governing weak decays. So they can be introduced to the Cosmic Shower game. This game gives them ample time to think, to consider the conservation laws that govern the interaction of elementary particles. They can learn particle decays in this game too. After they became familiar with how to represent the weak decays of hadrons, they can also be introduced to the Let's Detect game.

Age group of 18+ years: The easiest game for this age group is, in many cases, the Quark Matter Card Game. ANTI is also quite exciting for them, but usually younger children are faster and better players in the ANTI game. Basically, laypersons can get a hands-on experience with elementary particles and heavy ion physics using these two games, more motivated persons like B. Sc, M. Sc, or Ph. D students of physics can be introduced to the other two games, Cosmic Showers and Let's Detect.

Naming the Hadrons

In Table 2 you can find the names of the hadrons that you can form with the cards. You do not need to know the names, you can play all games without it. However, for example the advanced level Quark Matter game requires this knowledge, because you can get points for the names of your hadrons. In the advanced Let's Detect game, one may use Tables 2 and 3 as auxiliary tools or tables to be able to form those hadrons from Quark Matter Card Game cards or devices, that participate in the decays of Table 1.

First, let us recapitulate what are hadrons. Baryons, anti-baryons and mesons are called as hadrons. The term hadron simply refers to a color neutral, strongly interacting particle. Color neutrality refers to a combination of 3 quarks with red, green and blue colors, or a quark-antiquark pair with all the three colors included, or three anti-quarks with all the three different anti-colors.

	TABLE 2
	Quark
	content	Particle name	Symbol	JP
	uuu	Delta ++	Δ++	3/2+
	uud	proton	p+	½+
		Delta +	Δ+	3/2+
	udd	neutron	n0	½+
		Delta 0	Δ0	3/2+
	ddd	Delta −	Δ−	½+
	uus	Sigma +	Σ+	½+, 3/2+
	uds	Lambda 0	Λ0	½+
		Sigma 0	Σ0	3/2+
	dds	Sigma −	Σ−	½+, 3/2+
	uss	Xi 0	Ξ0	½+, 3/2+
	dss	Xi −	Ξ−	½+, 3/2+
	sss	Omega	Ω−	3/2+

Left in the first two column of TABLE 2, some baryons can be found with their names and quark contents. Colors have not been indicated, however, you can form only color neutral particles. So you can form a baryon using a green, red, and a blue quark. Or form an anti-baryon, using anti-quarks instead of quarks with the right colors (three anti-quarks: a red-green, a green-blue, and a blue-red to an anti-baryon). The third column shows the symbols that physicists usually use instead of writing the name of the particles. They are Greek letters, with the charges of the particles at the indices. By studying the chart, we can notice that in some cases, the same quark content can refer to different particles. The reason for it is the different total angular momentum (J) and parity (P) quantum numbers that correspond to the “momentum of the internal rotation” and “internal symmetry for spatial reflection”, but these are quantum mechanical properties that we do not explain in detail here.

Mesons in the Game

On the left side of TABLE 3, mesons are summarized and can be formed with particle cards. These mesons are the so called pseudoscalars. It should be noted that some quantum mechanical properties of these mesons are more subtle than our card games—even more interesting games await those who would like to explore these properties, but this requires some advanced studies of quantum mechanics.

	TABLE 3
	Quark content	Particle name	Symbol
	u d	positive pion	π+
	u ū	neutral pion1	π0
	d d	neutral pion1	π0
	ū d	negative pion	π−
	u s	positive kaon	K+
	d s	neutral kaon	K0
	d s	neutral anti-	K 0
		kaon
	ū s	negative kaon	K−
	s s	eta meson2	η0

1^st simplification: neutral pions are in fact quantum mechanically combined states of uū and d d states. This mixed state has components of uū and d d, which are representable by the cards, so we suggest to accept these components of π⁰ as π⁰ mesons for the purpose of this game.

2^nd simplification: The s s state is the remaining neutral combination of quark-anti-quark states, and for simplicity we identify this with the eta meson, which has a large s s component (although physicists know that the real eta meson has some uū and d d components, too, that are neglected in our games, for the sake of simplicity).

Elementary Particles on Your Own

In FIG. 21 is a set of elementary particle cards that corresponds to a complete deck. The 66 cards are labeled and colored as needed to play the disclosed games. The complete or full deck of Quark Matter Card Game consists of 42 quarks (including anti-quarks) and 24 leptons. The quark cards include 12 u, 12 d and 9 s quarks, colored to represent their color charge too. In addition, there included 3-3 cards standing for the ū, d and s anti-quarks.

APPENDIX A: BOOKLET CONTAINS SET OF 66 CARDS AND DESCRIBES 4 GAMES; “Quark Matter Card Game, Elementary Particles On Your Own,” A publication on www.lulu.com Copyright © Judit Csörgö, Csaba Török and Tamás Csörgö, 2011; Online downloadable .pdf edition: ISBN 978-963-89242-3-0; Paperback edition: ISBN 978-963-89242-2-3; the entire contents of which, are incorporated by reference herein.

While the present card game has been described above in terms of specific embodiments, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited to these disclosed embodiments. Upon reading the teachings of this disclosure many modifications and other embodiments of the invention will come to mind of those skilled in the art to which this invention pertains, and which are intended to be and are covered by both this disclosure and the appended claims. It is indeed intended that the scope of the invention should be determined by proper interpretation and construction of the appended claims and their legal equivalents, as understood by those of skill in the art relying upon the disclosure in this specification and the attached drawings.

The description has not attempted to exhaustively enumerate all possible variations. That alternate embodiments may not have been presented for a specific portion of the invention, and may result from a different combination of described portions, or that other undescribed alternate embodiments may be available for a portion, is not to be considered a disclaimer of those alternate embodiments. It will be appreciated that many of those undescribed embodiments are within the literal scope of the following claims, and others are equivalent. Furthermore, all references, publications, U.S. Patents, and U.S. Patent Application Publications cited throughout this specification are hereby incorporated by reference as if fully set forth in this specification.

Claims

1. A deck for playing an educational game, the deck comprising: a plurality of card-like devices having a face bearing a representation of an elementary particle.

2. The deck of claim 1, wherein the card-like devices comprise thin sheets suitable for shuffling and dealing by hand, the sheets fabricated from a material chosen from the group consisting of paper, cardstock, and plastic.

3. The deck of claim 1, wherein the card-like devices comprise an electronically generated image on a display device.

4. The deck of claim 1, wherein the plurality of card-like devices comprises at least three sets, each set consisting of: four devices each bearing a representation on the face of a u quark; four devices each bearing a representation on the face of a d quark; three devices each bearing a representation on the face of an s quark; one device bearing a representation on the face of an anti-u quark; one device bearing a representation on the face of an anti-d quark; one device bearing a representation on the face of an anti-strange quark; one device bearing a representation on the face of an electron; one device bearing a representation on the face of a positron; one device bearing a representation on the face of a muon; one device bearing a representation on the face of an anti-muon; one device bearing a representation on the face of an electron neutrino; one device bearing a representation on the face of an electron antineutrino; one device bearing a representation on the face of a muon neutrino; and one device bearing a representation on the face of a muon antineutrino.

5. A game comprising: a set of representations of elementary particles; and a body of rules for combining the representations, wherein the rules conform to rules for the combination of elementary particles according to the Standard Model of particle physics.

6. The game of claim 5, wherein: the elementary particles comprise quarks, anti-quarks, leptons, and anti-leptons.

7. The game of claim 6, wherein: quarks may be combined to form hadrons.

8. The game of claim 6, wherein: leptons and anti-leptons may be combined to annihilate one another.

9. The game of claim 6, wherein: quarks and anti-quarks may be combined to form mesons.

10. The game of claim 5, wherein said set of representations of elementary particles comprise thin sheets and/or tiles suitable for shuffling and dealing by hand, the sheets fabricated from a material chosen from the group consisting of paper, cardstock, and plastic, and/or the tiles fabricated from a material chosen from the group consisting of solid material, non-transparent material, wood, bone, stone, and plastic.

11. The game of claim 5, wherein said set of representations of elementary particles comprise an electronically generated image on a display device.

12. A method of playing a game, the method comprising: randomizing a set of representations of elementary particles; distributing at least a subset of the representations to a position, the position belonging to either a player or a central region; and combining the representations according to rules that conform to rules for the combination of elementary particles according to the Standard Model of particle physics.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein: distributing the representations comprises putting a fixed number of representations of quark, anti-quarks, leptons, anti-leptons or a combination thereof into the central region and distributing the remaining representations equally to two players.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising: a first player announcing the player's recognition of an allowable combination of quarks and anti-quarks in the center region; and in the case where the recognition is correct, a second player collecting all of the representations from the center region; and in the case where the recognition is incorrect, the first player collecting all of the representations from the center region; wherein winning the game comprises possessing no representations in one's own window and in one's own hand after all quark and anti-quark representations have been exhausted.

15. The method of claim 13, further comprising: a first player announcing the player's recognition of an allowable combination of leptons and anti-leptons in the center region; and in the case where the recognition is correct, a second player collecting all of the representations from the center region; and in the case where the recognition is incorrect, the first player collecting all of the representations from the center region; wherein winning the game comprises possessing no representations in one's own window and in one's own hand after all lepton and anti-lepton representations have been exhausted.

16. The method of claim 13, further comprising: a first player announcing the player's recognition of an allowable combination of anti-leptons and anti-quarks in the center region; and in the case where the recognition is correct, a second player collecting all of the representations from the center region; and in the case where the recognition is incorrect, the first player collecting all of the representations from the center region; wherein winning the game comprises possessing no representations in one's own window and in one's own hand after all lepton and anti-lepton representations have been exhausted.

17. The method of claim 12, wherein: distributing the representations comprises putting all representations into the center region; and one or more players seek permissible combinations of representations, removing the permissible combinations from the center region, the game ending when all permissible combinations have been made.

18. The method of claim 12, wherein: distributing the representations comprises: choosing a cosmic proton; putting three component representations of the cosmic proton in the center region; and then randomizing the remaining representations and concealing their values in a pack; and combining the representations comprises building up a cosmic shower.

19. The method of claim 12, wherein: distributing the representations comprises distributing all the representations equally to two players.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising: each player putting five representations in the center region; a first player claiming the ten representations, using at least two of them to form an allowable decay or partial decay, and announcing the name of at least two of the particles involved in the decay; and awarding points to the first player for forming the decay according to a predetermined table of point values, wherein a point value of minus one is awarded every second time the first player is unable to form an allowable decay after claiming the representations.

21. The method of claim 20, further comprising; replenishing the representations in the central region from the first player's representations.

22. The deck of claim 1, wherein the card-like devices represent elementary particles.

23. The deck of claim 22, wherein said particles are selected from the group comprising quarks, anti-quarks, leptons and anti-leptons.

24. The game of claim 5, wherein said rules substantially conform to the laws of nature.

25. The game of claim 24, wherein said rules are formulated in an entertaining and enlightening fashion.

26. The deck of claim 1, wherein the card-like device has a shape selected from the group comprising a rectangular shape, a square shape, a circle shape, a triangle shape, and a geometrical shape.

27. The method of claim 17, wherein one representation scores one point with the exception of representations of neutrinos and anti-neutrinos, that score no points.

28. The method of claim 17, where the sequence of removing representations from the central region starts with removing all the neutrinos and anti-neutrinos one after the other one-by-one, for no scores, followed by removing pairs of charged leptons, scoring one point for each card, and then by removing permissible hadron combinations where all the three colors have to be correctly represented for the formation of hadrons including mesons, baryons and anti-barions, also scoring one point for each card.

29. The method of claim 28, wherein the hadrons can be removed from the central region and only if a player can name that given hadron correctly.

30. The method of claim 29, wherein a player who tried to form a hadron but cannot name it or, names it incorrectly, then another player is free to name the hadron and whoever names that hadron correctly for the first time, that person gets the cards of the hadron and the scores for it, also scoring one point for each card.