TITLE: Unlocking the Secrets of the Strange Quark Sea

SPEAKER: Dr. Alice M. Hawthorne Allen,

The standard model of particle physics is well established through a long history of successful predictions and explanations of experimental observations. The Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) part of the model is considered to be the correct description of the basic quark and gluon interaction in the nucleon. However, the present status of the theory does not specify how the nucleons are structured internally. Parity-violating electron nucleon scattering experiments can be utilized to give us insight into the nucleon structure and non-negligible factors contributed by the quark gluon sea. Since protons and neutrons have no strange valence quarks, any observations attributable to strange quarks must be properties of this quark sea and tells us specific information about the form factors of the nucleon. Results from SAMPLE, the first of these experiments, will be presented.