muon
/ˈmjuːɒn/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.37 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "The μ-meson of Powell (called here muon) is instead a disintegration product of the pion, only weakly linked to the nucleons and therefore of little importance in the explanation of nuclear forces."
- "The spectrum of electrons arising from the decay of the negative mu meson has been determined. The muons are arrested in the gas of a high pressure hydrogen filled diffusion cloud chamber."
- "The data comes from experiments at the Fermilab US particle accelerator facility, which explored how subatomic particles called muons – similar to electrons but about 200 times heavier – move in a magnetic field."
Etymology
Contraction of the earlier term mu-meson; the particle has now been recategorised as a lepton. Coined by Italian physicist Enrico Fermi in 1951 in his book Elementary Particles.