Algebraic Reasoning about Reactions: Discovery of Conserved Properties in Particle Physics

Abstract

Kocabas (1991) describes a situation from particle physics in which quantum properties and conservation laws are postulated from lists of observed and unobserved reactions. Kocabas also presents a program named BR-3 that can rediscover some accepted quantum properties from textbook data, although it fails on a more difficult example from the same source. This paper describes PAULI, a program that solves the same task as BR-3 but uses a different problem-solving model. PAULI produces different, simpler solutions than does BR-3, and it can also handle the problematic example. After comparing the two programs, we conclude that PAULI offers distinct advantages over its predecessor, which we attribute to an algebraic approach to reasoning about sets of reactions. © 1994, Kluwer Academic Publishers. All rights reserved.