Elementary fermions are grouped into three generations, each comprising two leptons and two quarks. The first generation includes up and down quarks, the second strange and charm quarks, and the third bottom and top quarks.
quark, any member of a group of elementary subatomic particles that interact by means of the strong force and are believed to be among the fundamental constituents of matter.
Quarks are tiny, mysterious particles that, together with gluons and leptons, compose all matter in the universe. They are the essential constituents of protons, neutrons, and many other particles, and they obey mind-bending rules that challenge our everyday intuition.
There are six different kinds of quarks with a wide range of masses. They are named up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom. Quarks are the only elementary particles to experience all the known forces of nature and to have a fractional electric charge.
Quarks are observed to occur only in combinations of two quarks (mesons), three quarks (baryons). There was a recent claim of observation of particles with five quarks (pentaquark), but further experimentation has not borne it out.
Quarks come in six types: up, down, charm, strange, top and bottom. The tetraquarks and pentaquarks discovered so far, at the LHC and other colliders, usually contain a charm quark and its antimatter counterpart (a charm antiquark), with the remaining two or three quarks being up, down or strange quarks or their antiquarks.
The quarks, which experience strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions, come in six flavors: up and down (the constituents of the proton and neutron), charm and strange, and top and bottom.
How Quarks Build Protons and Neutrons The up and down quarks combine in specific arrangements to form composite particles called hadrons. Hadrons made up of three quarks are known as baryons, and the most common examples are the particles that reside in the center of an atom.
Quarks are the fundamental building blocks of matter, one of the basic constituents of subatomic particles that, together with leptons, form the basis of the material universe.
Elementary fermions are grouped into three generations, each comprising two leptons and two quarks. The first generation includes up and down quarks, the second strange and charm quarks, and the third bottom and top quarks.