In the Dark

I thought I’d give you a sneak preview of something soon to feature at the forthcoming Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition. With input from particle physicists from the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Sussex, the inestimable Dorothy Lamb has designed a “Knit your own Neutralino” pack, which contains a knitting pattern and embellishments (wool not included), that can be used to construct a plushie representing the lightest neutralino, χ⁰₁, a candidate for the dark matter that pervades the Universe.

Here are some examples, as produced by Dorothy herself:

Here are some more elaborate variations, representing (I think) different types of chargino.

Whatever they are, they’re a lot of fun and in my opinion more than a little bit camp!

I think we should introduce knitting as part of the “transferable skills” element of our physics courses. If we did, Dorothy would definitely graduate with first class honours!

This entry was posted on June 21, 2014 at 4:26 pm and is filed under The Universe and Stuff with tags chargino, Dorothy Lamb, neutralino, Particle Physics, plushies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.