eli5 : What is particle “spin” amd why are values things like 1/2, 1, etc?
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Quantum physics is super hard to eli5 and especially the concept of spin because it doesn’t really have any equivalent in classic physics that we can analogize to. The main thing to know is what spin is not. Spin in this case is *not* a measure of actual particles as little balls spinning around an axis – that’s not how particles work. Spin is a measure of a particle’s intrinsic angular momentum, so it has *some* similarities to what we think of as spin, but it’s not really same. I’m going to borrow an explanation by Stephen Hawking here:
“What the spin of a particle really tells us is what the particle looks like from different directions. A particle of spin 0 is like a dot: it looks the same from every direction. On the other hand, a particle of spin 1 is like an arrow: it looks different from different directions. Only if one turns it round a complete revolution (360 degrees) does the particle look the same. A particle of spin 2 is like a double-headed arrow: it looks the same if one turns it round half a revolution (180 degrees). Similarly, higher spin particles look the same if one turns them through smaller fractions of a complete revolution.”
I don’t know if any of this helped at all.
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