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Quarks: "Messenger Particle"

Quarks are subatomic particles that can be found in hadrons and are held together by the strong force carried by gluons. There are six flavors of quark: up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom. Up and down quarks are the most stable due to their lower mass. Protons are the most stable baryon and are made up of two up quarks and one down quark, giving it a net charge of 1. The electric charge of quarks can be added together to determine the charge of the composite baryon or meson particle.

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21 views

Quarks: "Messenger Particle"

Quarks are subatomic particles that can be found in hadrons and are held together by the strong force carried by gluons. There are six flavors of quark: up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom. Up and down quarks are the most stable due to their lower mass. Protons are the most stable baryon and are made up of two up quarks and one down quark, giving it a net charge of 1. The electric charge of quarks can be added together to determine the charge of the composite baryon or meson particle.

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abbylazo
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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QUARKS

-It can be found in hadrons and is held together by a strong force (also known as colour force)
-The particle responsible for an electron to communicate with a neighbouring electron is called a
messenger particle
(Messenger particles may be represented by:
Photons in light and electromagnetic radiation
Gravitons in gravitational force
Z-particle, W
+
and W
-
in weak force.)
-The messenger particles that stick quarks together are called gluons
-quarks come in groups of three or two
*Quarks in groups of three = baryons
e.g. Protons, neutrons.
*Quarks in pairs (quark-antiquark combination) = mesons
e.g. Pions
Electric Charge (also known as flavors)
Electric Charge
-1/3 d (down) s (strange) b (bottom)
2/3 u (up) c (charm) t (top)

-Among the 6 flavors of quark, down and up quarks are the most stable since it has a lower mass than
the other 4.
-Following this, the proton is the most stable baryon since it has 2 up quarks and 1 down quark with a
resultant charge of 1.
-Quark combinations can easily be verified by looking at the charge of the resulting baryon.
e.g.
Proton = u u d
u = 2/3
d = -1/3
u + u + d = 2/3 + 2/3 -1/3
= 1 resultant charge


Quark Combinations
Quark Combination Particle Particle Symbol
u u d Proton p
u d d Neutron n
u d s Neutral sigma
0

d d s Negative sigma
-

u u s Positive sigma
+

u s s Neutral chi
0

d s s Negative chi
-

u d s Lambda
u Positive pion
d Negative pion
d Neutral kaon
0

U Positive kaon
+

s Negative kaon
-

s Neutral antikaon
0

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