#81 VIλ
Various sub-atomic particles are mentioned in Project Hail Mary 55 times.
Protons are mentioned 2 times in the singular and 14 times in the plural. Neutrinos are mentioned 6 times in the singular and 18 times in the plural (exclusively in Chapter 13). Electrons are mentioned 4 times in the singular and 1 time in the plural. Positrons are mentioned 1 time in the singular. Photons are mentioned 4 times in the singular and 5 times in the singular.
Most of these occurrences are on Earth. Only 4 mentions are in Space (“protons” 3 times and “proton” 1 time, all by Grace in direct speech; and “electron” 1 time, by him as narrator).
Dr. Lokken mentions every single one of the particle names and is the only person other than Grace to mention any of them.
Here’s a visualization of the relative frequencies across all sections and chapters of the book.
Each coloured bar represents a section and is colour-coded for Earth sections (green) and Space sections (purple).
The grey bars represent the chapters, which are marked with ticks and numbers.
The y-axis is the relative frequency, i.e. the proportion of tokens in that section (or chapter) that match the names of sub-atomic particles (so a bar might be higher, even with fewer occurrences, if the section or chapter is shorter).
Note that we focused on the named particles and did not consider terms like “gamma ray”, “cosmic ray”, “x-ray”, etc.
That’s kind of neat. I never got too deep into atomic physics.
13.185