quark

A quark () is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. All commonly observable matter is composed of up quarks, down quarks and electrons. Owing to a phenomenon known as color confinement, quarks are never found in isolation; they can be found only within hadrons, which include baryons (such as protons and neutrons) and mesons, or in quark–gluon plasmas. For this reason, much of what is known about quarks has been drawn fro

AI overview

A quark is one of the tiniest building blocks of matter that combines with other quarks to form protons and neutrons, which make up the nuclei of atoms. Quarks are important because understanding them helps us explain what all ordinary matter around us is fundamentally made of, though they can never be observed by themselves—they only exist bound together inside larger particles.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Key facts

Particle.alt: Three colored balls (symbolizing quarks) connected pairwise by springs (symbolizing gluons), all inside a gray circle (symbolizing a proton). The colors of the balls are red, green, and blue, to parallel each quark's color charge. The red and blue balls are labeled "u" (for "up" quark) and the green one is labeled "d" (for "down" quark).
Particle.caption: A proton is composed of two up quarks, one down quark, and the gluons that mediate the forces "binding" them together. The color assignment of individual quarks is arbitrary, but all three colors must be present; red, blue and green are used as an analogy to the primary colors that together produce a white color.
Particle.num_types: 6 (up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top)
Particle.composition: elementary particle
Particle.statistics: fermionic
Particle.generation: 1st, 2nd, 3rd
Particle.interaction: strong, weak, electromagnetic, gravitation
Particle.antiparticle: antiquark ()
Particle.discovered: SLAC ()
Particle.electric_charge: + e, − e
Particle.color_charge: yes
Particle.spin:  ħ
Particle.name: Quark
Particle.image: Quark structure proton.svg
Particle.image_size: 225px

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Image: Quark.svg

Show 4 more facts

Commons category: Quarks
Commons gallery: Quark
spin quantum number: 0.5
Stack Exchange tag: physics.stackexchange.com/tags/quarks

Sources (9)

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~31 min read

Article

19 sections

Contents

Classification
History
Etymology
Properties
Electric charge
Spin
Weak interaction
Strong interaction and color charge
Mass
Size
Table of properties
Interacting quarks
Sea quarks
Other phases of quark matter
See also
Explanatory notes
References
Further reading
External links

Quarks have various intrinsic properties, including electric charge, mass, color charge, and spin. They are the only elementary particles in the Standard Model of particle physics to experience all four fundamental interactions, also known as fundamental forces (electromagnetism, gravitation, strong interaction, and weak interaction), as well as the only known particles whose electric charges are not integer multiples of the elementary charge.