05 Jul Contest!!*
I have a confession to make. I don’t really know how to run a contest.
I mean, obviously I sort of do. And I know I can make up any rules I want and stuff, but I never really understand those ones where you get points for stuff. But I want to do that kind.
You know, you get a point if you tweet about this, and another point if you blog about it. And definitely you get a point if you climb on your roof and shout about it. If you have a video of it and post that, you get at least 5 or maybe even 6 points.
But then what happens? Don’t I just use a random number generator anyway?? So if you had 3 points, were you number 4, 5, and 6? That seems awfully complicated to compute.
Besides, I kind of like the idea of having to compete for the prize. I want to judge you, you know?
But what should the question be?
First, the prize.
Let me start by saying that this contest was inspired by the package I received in the mail today: A hot off the presses, advance copy of the finished paperback version of the New York Times bestseller, SUPERNATURALLY by Kiersten White (that was kind of a mouthful, but I really wanted to get it all in there).
Now, as many of you probably know, Supernaturally is the 2nd book in the series. I can’t just give this away without giving away the first book in the series, PARANORMALCY.
But Michelle, I hear you complaining (why are you complaining???), that’s only 2/3 of the series. Don’t you know there’s a third book coming out really really soon?? How am I supposed to wait for that???
Well, first of all, that 3rd book (of course I knew there was a 3rd book coming out) is named ENDLESSLY and it’s going to be out really soon, as in July 24th!!!
But even better, you can win a copy NOW!! Right here!!! In this contest!!!
That’s right, I’m going to give away the entire trilogy to one lucky person!!!
All you have to do is tell me an alternate (no science required) definition of a Higgs Boson.
Oh, and also retweet this and reblog it and video yourself shouting it from the rooftops.
Winner will be chosen Tuesday July 10th!
*Contest is not open Internationally because there are too many annoying forms, but international people are welcome to participate (you just can’t win).
Barbara Ellingson
Posted at 18:17h, 05 July“I want to judge you.” Tee hee.
Nikki W
Posted at 18:23h, 05 JulyDo we just leav ethe comment here? Ok here goes:
Faeries. Because hey, it’s a theory. It ain’t proven. It fits! Lol
piscesgirl1688 (at) gmail (dot) com
Marquis
Posted at 18:26h, 05 JulyPass.
Parajunkee
Posted at 18:29h, 05 JulyI would have to say the Higgs Boson is the ‘Squatch* of the world of Physics.
*Squatch (a derivation of sasquatch)
Erin Olds
Posted at 18:34h, 05 JulyHiggs-Boson: proof that God is particularly interested in scientific discoveries.
*snerk*
(Also, nothing to do with the HB, but way to go getting Kiersten published. She’s an awesome writer!)
kristina
Posted at 18:34h, 05 JulyThe Higgs Boson is the theoretical particle that all the cool teens intuitively add to their clothing & accessory choices to make them appear as “cool” instead of “normal” or average. When absent, not only do the teens not matter but they are considered non-zeroes in the school culture. Like most aspects of school culture, most physicists are trying to figure out the long-term implications but cannot reach concensus despite finding these particles en masse in all school cafeterias.
Aurelia Blue
Posted at 18:37h, 05 JulyI stand by J.D. Salanger who wrote in Zooey, “–he said he was sitting at the table in the kitchen, all by himself, drinking a glass of ginger ale and eating saltines and reading “Dombey and Son,” and all of a sudden Jesus sat down in the other chair and asked if he could have a small glass of ginger ale. A small glass, mind you–.” This is pasted to the side of my monitor. Too me it says it all. My MomMom used to give me a small glass of ginger ale every afternoon and even though I hadn’t yet grown into religion or questions of what does it alllllllll mean, I knew that all was right with the Universe, that we just ride it. Higgs Boson is the ginger ale of the Universe.
Ok, that’s my official entry.
writerworking
Posted at 16:25h, 09 Julythat’s really good.
Jennifer
Posted at 18:38h, 05 JulyHiggs Boson was a rapper who peaked in the late 90s. His hits included, “I Wanna Unzip Your Genes,” and “We’re Radioactive, Baby.” He fell out of popularity after a concert incident involving fireworks and a lost toothbrush.
Zena Parks
Posted at 19:23h, 05 JulyWordPress needs a like button
Ruby
Posted at 18:41h, 05 JulyHiggs-Boson, as best as I can understand it, is a teeny-tiny theoretical thingy that might or might not exist. So teeny-tiny, in fact, that I can’t really bring myself to care one way or another.
You’re welcome. ;p
Sarah
Posted at 18:46h, 05 JulyHiggs Boson: the next literary great in the YA world. Or she would be, if only she would lose the physics in her novel.
Kayeleen Hamblin
Posted at 19:18h, 05 JulyHiggs – Boson: The last name of a semi-literate man who works on a boat and couldn’t spell the word when he printed it on business cards. *Currently looking for a job, as his previous captain had issues with his education levels.
Zena Parks
Posted at 19:21h, 05 JulyA) I love contests!
B) I love that you want to judge us 🙂
C) Duh! A Higgs Boson is similar to a Hicks contraction, except it happens in your bum. Also known as a sciatic nerve pinch, the Higgs Boson was jealous of the attention Hicks contractions were getting and it thought the attention was due to the cool name, so it gave itself an even cooler one!
D) Pick me!
J E Fritz
Posted at 19:35h, 05 JulyI am the Higgs boson.
Karen
Posted at 20:17h, 05 JulyThe Higgs Boson is another word for a very plastic flamingo. You see, there are your average, everyday plastic flamingos, decorating the outside of a trailer perhaps, but to lawn ornament enthusiasts the Higgs Boson is the epitome of their passion. The first part of the interesting name comes from pigs in Hamburg, thus Higgs, because they are a very intense shade of pink, a colour only a very plastic flamingo can achieve. Boson comes from the latin word for “really-expensive-so-it-must-be-better-than-anything-else plastic”: bosoniia. (Watch that double “i”. Without it, you’ve got the latin word for Swedish dumpster) The Higgs Boson is at the top of every collector’s wishlist but can only be gotten through secret means that cannot be fully disclosed at the moment. Let’s just say they involve no less than three Bengal Tigers, a scuba dive and a gymnastics routine.
Monica Fumarolo (@mfumarolo)
Posted at 20:21h, 05 JulyHiggs Boson is actually an unfortunate spelling mistake that originally had absolutely nothing to do with science whatsoever. In fact, the phrase was originally Higg’s Boston, referring to a posh area of the east coast city where intellectuals had a tendency to set up residence and Higg’s was their academic leader, a free thinker who believed that he should set up an institution of learning where the most brilliant could come and study so his legacy could live on for centuries to come. Unfortunately after a drunken poker game, he wagered the name of the school when he was out of money and lost to a total prick, John Harvard.
Barbara Ellingson
Posted at 21:28h, 05 JulyHiggs Bo’sun was a mate on a Royal Navy Ship in the late 1760’s. When captured by the Black Pearl, captained by Jack Sparrow, he begged for mercy and showed his personal store of rum. True love followed, and the rest is history.
Evil Editor
Posted at 21:48h, 05 JulyHiggs Boson, the probability factor that will determine whether I post an assortment of Kiersten White’s funniest, most brilliant cartoon captions and writing exercises on my blog July 24th or a menagerie of her most embarrassing, saddest attempts at humor, is, I suspect, somehow connected to whether or not I win the books.
Kiersten White
Posted at 21:56h, 05 JulyOh, Evil Editor, it’s so cute you’re pretending I was ever anything less than devastatingly witty.
Bethany Griffith
Posted at 22:15h, 05 JulyHiggs Boson is the rakishly handsome captain of a Fire-fly Class spaceship.He is a personable fellow, just don’t ask him about the peg-leg; he doesn’t like to talk about his wife.
Harris Bloom
Posted at 22:39h, 05 JulyHiggs Boson was Mayor of Hazard County during the Dukes of Hazard’s fourth season when Boss Hogg was out due to contract negotiations…
Valette M.
Posted at 00:00h, 06 JulyA Higgs Boson is the recliner old women store their many cats and said cats’ accessories on.
Tim Barzyk
Posted at 01:36h, 06 JulyEveryone knows that if you’re in outer space, then you’re “weightless.” I mean, if gravity’s not pulling on you (like when you’re near a planet) then you don’t weigh anything, right? Right. (Bet you thought I was gonna say, “Well, actually…”) But it’s true: in outer space, you don’t weigh anything, because gravity isn’t pulling you down.
That’s “weight” – when gravity pulls you down. That’s why you’d weigh more on Jupiter than on Earth.
Fine. We’re weightless in outer space.
However, it still takes force to move you, right? I mean, say you and your friend are floating around between the stars. She tells the good ol’ fart-in-your-spacesuit joke, and you give her a hearty, jocular shove in the arm. She goes flying off the opposite direction, tumbling endlessly through the black void (okay, technically, you’d also fly off in the other direction, but let’s not worry about that right now).
The thing is, it took muscular energy to move her. You felt the tension in your arm when you pushed her, and that energy was translated into her movement.
But she’s weightless. She doesn’t WEIGH anything.
So why did it take any energy at all to move her? You shouldn’t have felt any resistance at all, right? Well, actually… (ah, finally got to say it).
It’s not because of her weight; it’s because of her mass. And this is where the good ol’ Higgs Boson comes in.
Okay, you’re friend’s flying off. What do you do? Happens that you have a jet pack on, but it has really small thrusters. Say you’re a portly fellow. You like your Ben & Jerry’s and monster meat-lover pizzas, and spent all your money on made-to-order spacesuits because they just don’t come in your size otherwise, so you had to get the economy jet pack.
You want to save money on fuel too, so you just turn the thrusters on and off, because you figure the inertia (you know, “things in motion stay in motion”) will carry you to your friend.
No can do. She’s cruising. You need to speed up. So you turn on the jet pack and leave it on – 2mph, 4mph, 8mph, 16mph – you’re ACCELERATING – going faster and faster with each passing second.
Cool thing is, you can measure mass by knowing the pushing-force of your jet pack, and how quickly you’re accelerating. Here’s the token equation (F = MA; Force = Mass x Acceleration). You know the force of your thrusters – economy-class thruster force – and you can measure your acceleration (simply how fast your speed changes through time), so bingo-bango-boingo, you can solve for mass.
BUT…drum roll please…why do you need to exert force to move an object with mass? I mean, you’re still in outer space. You’re not swimming in the ocean, nor have air resistance to contend with – there’s NOTHING out there to push against! So why does a BIG spaceship (with big mass) need BIG rockets to move just as much as a SMALL spaceship with SMALL rockets?
SOMETHING is exerting resistance on these objects; something is exerting resistance on their mass (and more resistance on more massive objects). What is it?
It’s the Higgs Field.
A “field” is just something that’s present everywhere all the time. If you were a fish in the ocean, the “field” could be considered the water all around you.
The Higgs Field is something that pervades the universe. It’s everywhere all the time. Massive objects (like giganto spaceships) interact with the field (encounter resistance) more than tiny objects (like hydrogen atoms), so it requires more force to overcome that resistance and move those massive objects through the field. Like pushing a big submarine through the water compared to a sleek barracuda.
Well, how do we know that this field exists? No one has seen it or measured it, or mystically conjured it through supernatural divination. How can we tell if it’s really there?
We slice off a little piece of it…a part of it…a “part”-icle of it. A Higgs Particle, which happens to be a boson (just a type of particle). A field (like the ocean) can have waves in it (kinda like ocean waves) and the smallest part of the waves is called a particle (like a water molecule). In this case, it’s the Higgs Particle, in a field called the Higgs Field (which is a quantum field, and that’s why everything is so teensy-weensy).
It takes a LOT of energy to slice apart the Higgs Field, and the particles are wily little fellas that don’t last long, so it’s really hard to find them.
But if we find the Higgs Boson, then we can substantiate that the Higgs Field exists. We’ll understand why things have mass, and we’ll finally know why it’s not a good idea to tell fart jokes in space.
Tim
ScienceForFiction.com
@timbarzyk
Tim Barzyk
Posted at 16:17h, 10 July[belated redemption post] Higgs Boson: The secret ingredient in Everlasting Gobstoppers.
ashley
Posted at 02:59h, 06 JulyIt’s a talking smished lion a la Wonderfalls.
Karla Mouncey-Jaggers
Posted at 03:02h, 06 JulyThe Higgs Boson scenario is the rather unfortunate event when a pair of cow hoofs are served instead of a pigs. The results is that the consumer is frightened into madness by the idea that there are a sub-species of pigs who have grown to the size of cows. Thus the consumer is a victim of the Higgs Boson scenario.
Kayla Olson
Posted at 08:34h, 06 JulyUnlike (rude and annoying) Braxton-Hicks contractions, (even more rude and annoying) Higgs Boson contractions signal the impending doom of childbirth true labor, and must be tended to immediately lest a baby human come exploding into the world. If you experience Higgs Boson while alone, cry remain calm and SHAKE FISTS AT THE UNIVERSE pray your significant other comes home yesterday soon. CONGRATULATIONS!
🙂 olsonkayla (at) gmail (dot) com
Kayla Olson
Posted at 08:37h, 06 JulyDangit. My strikethroughs didn’t work. BOOOO.
Imagine they are there, through the words “the impending doom of childbirth,” “cry,” “SHAKE FISTS AT THE UNIVERSE,” and “yesterday.” 🙂
Kaye M. (@gildedspine)
Posted at 10:23h, 06 JulyHiggs Boson: an undiscovered self-published author who will become the next Stephenie Meyer and brainwash the world.
Retweeted as Kaye M. (gildedspine) on Twitter
busylearninghome AT gmail DOT com
M. Andrew Patterson (@DyadicEchoes)
Posted at 10:34h, 06 JulyA non-sciencey definition of the HB? Oh my…
Ok, imagine if Superman were really small and…um…super! Sigh…ok…um…let’s try this…
Matter is stuff.
HB is what makes stuff…stuff. Without HB, stuff wouldn’t exist and the universe would be full of Anti-stuff…Anti-stuff is made up of ELJames Particles. When the ELJ and HB particles get together, bad things happen. It’s safer if ELJ particles are kept in a small little box where nobody can touch them or see them because even seeing them can have detrimental affects on anything made up of HB particles…which is what makes stuff…stuff. And stuff is just another name for Matter.
Lorri Hamm
Posted at 16:43h, 06 JulyHiggs Boson: Most definitely a Jim Henson puppet.
Patty Blount
Posted at 16:54h, 06 JulyIn particle physics, the Higgs boson is the thing that gives matter its mass. What does this mean to you and me?
It’s the cause of Bieber Fever. No, seriously. You or I could walk through a crowded room unnoticed, probably even undetected. But Bieber? As soon as he walked in, the crowd would surround him, move with him, weighing him down, i.e, ‘mass’ — thus the Higgs boson causes Bieber Fever.
Parker Meador
Posted at 16:56h, 06 JulyHiggs Boson is my stuffy English butler who has a problem following orders. It seems I am the only one who can see him but that doesnt seem to stop him from being a world class arse. WOULD SOMEBODY ANSWER THE DAMN DOOR!!!
Live Learn Eat (@LiveLearnEat)
Posted at 17:16h, 06 JulyA Higgs Boson is some sort of subatomic particle in some physicist or other’s theory of something or the other. Um, yeah. Physics? Not my strong suit. Personally, I think it’s the William Shakespeare of physics – they say it exists, but no one really knows. I follow you (@LiveLearnEat) and retweeted the giveaway!
But more than the giveaway, I was wondering – I emailed you a while ago to check on a partial request and haven’t heard back. You’re crazy busy with all of your current clients’ success, so I completely understand that prospective new authors are on the back-burner. I’m just in NYC for auditions this summer and since NYC is your home base (and you’re my dream agent) I couldn’t help but wonder if you like it or not…
Wolfson Literary
Posted at 17:33h, 06 JulyOops, sorry. Can you email me again please?
Live Learn Eat (@LiveLearnEat)
Posted at 07:08h, 09 JulyNo worries, thank you!
Sara B. Larson
Posted at 17:42h, 06 JulyUm, wow. I’ve been trying to come up with something clever, and I’ve got nada. But I’d really love to win your contest, so… I’m going to enlist help. According to my seven-year-old the Higgs Boson is the pill you can take to become a genius like Johnny Test’s older sisters.
Sounds good to me!
Jen @ Midnight Book Thief
Posted at 05:57h, 07 JulyHiggs Boson: Evie Johnson’s original name before everyone vetoed the idea. 😛 Awesome competition! I loved Paranormalcy! 🙂
Issy
Posted at 11:30h, 07 July🙂 Higgs Boson– we may as well call it the “nanny particle” It’s the Mary Poppins of the particle world. Except without the spoonful of sugar.
Bryce Daniels
Posted at 11:50h, 07 JulyHiggs Boson was the owner of and sole agent for the WCGAP Literary Agency. (We Can Get Anything Published) My understanding is that he was last spotted over twenty years ago, drowning in an avalanche of queries. He hasn’t been seen since. This, of course, led many to believe that, like the elusive particle which was named after him, he didn’t really exist after all.
Hillary Raymer
Posted at 17:12h, 07 JulyHiggs Boson and the Sorcerer’s Stone…at least, that was his original name before J.K. Rowling decided she liked Harry Potter better. Higgs was then sent over to Hufflepuff and never seen again.
Kristine C. Asselin (@KristineAsselin)
Posted at 17:21h, 07 JulyOMG. Higgs Boson is the MC of my novel set on Saturn’s moon. I can’t believe I picked a name that is the exact same as a sciency-thing I don’t understand. 🙂
Erica Olson
Posted at 17:21h, 07 JulyI watched a 10-minute video about the Higgs Boson and I can say with utmost scientific authority that it is a purple thingy.
(and I can never figure out the blog-giveaway-points-system either, so I skip the extra points and just hope people spread the word anyway. yeah, I should probably figure it out…)
Sue Speake
Posted at 09:38h, 08 JulyHiggs Boson is another name for the yeast that goes into my fabulous pumpkin bread. Without the yeast the ingredients are delicious but do not work together to make bread. Higgsy is the little package of magic that makes everything come together. The little yeast particles, like bits of God, are powerful and yet tiny. They seem to get lost amongst the ingredients of the bread.
Rhymes With Squeal! « Wolfson Literary Agency
Posted at 11:16h, 09 July[…] don’t forget to enter the contest to win a copy of ENDLESSLY by Kiersten White. Winner will be announced […]
Jenna (MTGReviews) (@MTGReviews)
Posted at 23:18h, 09 JulyHiggs Boson is a misspelling of “Hag’s Bosom”, which is very saggy and full of warts. Best to be avoided.
OK, maybe that was the unfunny, entirely uncreative explanation I could come up with in the middle of the night.
Let me go ask Dr. Sheldon Cooper what a Higgs Boson. I’m sure he will know the answer. It sounds rather sciencey and too complex for me.
howdymomma(at)yahoo(dot)com
Margie Mohamad
Posted at 23:29h, 09 JulyHiggs Boson is the scientific term for the feeling one gets before or after reading a great book. It is a melting pot of emotions that include curiosity, excitement, elation, and a thirst for more. on said book. It is often heard as “Oh I’ve heard The Hunger Games is a great trilogy and I got all the books! I can’t wait to read them. I’ve got Higgs Boson!”
WARNING: Can be very contagious and cause hysterics when time comes around for a release of a new awaited book. If you have excessive Higgs Boson, please visit your nearest library and medicate with new books.
Because I’m Awesome Like That « Wolfson Literary Agency
Posted at 08:02h, 10 July[…] I wasn’t going to use a random number generator or anything. I wanted to judge you for your entries and so I’m judging […]
Julia R
Posted at 18:00h, 13 JulyHiggs Boson is that unidentifiable thing that makes happy people happy, crazy people crazy, and writers writers. It took 9 billion US dollars and 4 years just to see it. Who know how much and how long it’ll take to understand it?