The Particle Adventure | What is the world made of?

Eternal questions The search for the fundamental The atom Is the atom fundamental? Is the nucleus fundamental? Are protons and neutrons
fundamental? The modern atom model The scale of the atom What are we looking for? The standard model The standard model quiz

Quarks and leptons Matter & antimatter What is antimatter? Quarks The naming of quarks Hadrons, baryons and mesons Leptons Lepton decays Lepton type conservation Lepton decay quiz Neutrinos Quiz - What particles are made of

The four interactions How does matter interact? The unseen effect Electromagnetism Residual EM force What about the nucleus? Strong Color charge Quark confinement Quarks emit gluons Residual strong force Weak Electroweak Gravity Interaction summary Quantum mechanics The Pauli Exclusion Principle Fermions and bosons A lot to remember

What is decay? Radioactivity Radioactive particles Confusion about decays A look into the nucleus If it can happen, it will Half life Missing mass Particle decay mediators Virtual particles Different interactions Annhiliations Bubble chamber and decays Neutron beta decays Electron / positron annhiliation Top production

Beyond the standard model The standard model as a theory Three generations What about masses? Grand Unified Theory Forces and the Grand Unified Theory Supersymmetry String theory Extra dimensions Dark Matter

Testing a theory Searching for the atom's structure Rutherford's result Rutherford's analysis How physicists experiment Deflected probe

Detecting the world A better microscope Wavelength - The cave Wavelength - The moral Wavelength and resolution explained The physicists tool: The accelerator Waves and particles The world's meterstick Mass and energy Energy-mass conversion

Accelerators How to obtain particles to accelerate Accelerating particles Accelerating particles: Animation Accelerator design Fixed target experiments Colliding beam experiment A linear or circular accelerator What makes particles go in a circle? Advantages of accelerator design Major accelerators The event Detectors Detector shapes

Modern detectors Typical detector components Measuring charge and momentum Detector cross section Quiz - Particle tracks The computer reconstruction A quark/gluon event The end

The Standard Model - What is the world made of? - Quarks


	Quarks are one type of matter particle. Most of the matter we see around us is made from protons and neutrons, which are composed of quarks.

There are six quarks, but physicists usually talk about them in terms of three pairs: up/down, charm/strange, and top/bottom. (Also, for each of these quarks, there is a corresponding antiquark.) Be glad that quarks have such silly names -- it makes them easier to remember!

Quarks have the unusual characteristic of having a fractional electric charge, unlike the proton and electron, which have integer charges of +1 and -1 respectively. Quarks also carry another type of charge called color charge, which we will discuss later.

The most elusive quark, the top quark, was discovered in 1995 after its existence had been theorized for 20 years.

Want to see a particle physicist's idea of a good pun?