Spontaneous symmetry breaking

Imagine you and your best friend are playing with a ball. Both of you love playing with the ball and want to hold it, but you cannot hold the ball at the same time. So, you and your friend decide to flip a coin to see who gets to hold the ball first.

Now, imagine that instead of a ball or a coin, we are talking about physical properties in the universe, like electricity, magnetism, and gravity. These properties are like the ball and the coin; they cannot coexist in the same place at the same time, and nature seems to pick one or the other.

This is where spontaneous symmetry breaking comes in. Nature has to choose one of the properties to manifest, but it does not have a preference for any one of them. So, it chooses one randomly, and this creates a spontaneous symmetry breaking.

Think of symmetry as balance, like two sides of a see-saw. When the coin is flipped, the see-saw tips to one side or the other, breaking the balance or symmetry. The same thing happens with the physical properties in the universe. The choice of which property to manifest breaks the balance and creates an imbalance in favor of one or the other.

This spontaneous symmetry breaking is important because it helps explain how particles acquire mass and influence the behavior of the universe. Without it, we wouldn't be able to understand why things work the way they do. So, much like flipping a coin to decide who gets to hold the ball first, nature randomly chooses which properties to manifest, leading to spontaneous symmetry breaking and the creation of our universe as we know it.