The Duck Pond Splash Down

Quarks are essential for understanding how the universe is built on the most basic level, influencing the structure and behaviour of all matter in the cosmos.

---

Here’s a simple breakdown of what quarks are and how they work:

1. Basic Particles: Quarks are elementary particles, which means they can’t be broken down into smaller parts. They are some of the smallest things that scientists know about.
2. Types of Quarks: There are six types (or “flavours”) of quarks: up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom. The up and down quarks are the most common and are what protons and neutrons are made of.
3. Charge: Quarks are unique because they have a fractional electric charge, which is either +2/3 or -1/3 of the electron’s charge. For example, an up quark has a charge of +2/3, while a down quark has a charge of -1/3.
4. Combining to Form Particles: Quarks combine in specific ways to form composite particles called hadrons. The most well-known hadrons are protons and neutrons.
5. Strong Force: Quarks are held together by a force called the strong nuclear force, which is one of the four fundamental forces in nature. This force is so strong that quarks are always found in groups; they are never observed alone in nature. This phenomenon is known as “confinement.”
6. Colour Charge: Unlike anything we see in the everyday world, quarks have a property called “Colour charge,” which is related to how they interact with each other. There are three “colours” of quarks: red, green, and blue, and these colours are balanced in particles to make them neutral.

Protons are made of two up quarks and one down quark
(up-up-down +2/3 +2/3 -1/3 = 3/3 = +1)

Neutrons are made of two down quarks and one up quark
(down-down-up -1/3 -1/3 +2/3 = 0/3 = 0).

Quarks are organized into three generations, each containing:
one quark with a positive electric charge
(+2/3 times the elementary charge)
and
one quark with a negative electric charge
(-1/3 times the elementary charge).

Here’s a breakdown of the six types of quarks:

First Generation Quarks

• Up Quark (u): It has a charge of +2/3. Up quarks are the lightest and most stable of all quarks, which makes them extremely common in the universe.

• Down Quark (d): It has a charge of -1/3. Down quarks are also very stable and, alongside up quarks, form protons and neutrons.

Second Generation Quarks

• Charm Quark (c): It carries a +2/3 charge. Charm quarks are heavier than up and down quarks and are found in higher energy physics experiments.

• Strange Quark (s): It has a -1/3 charge. Strange quarks are important for the study of the strong nuclear force and hadron structure in particle physics.

Third Generation Quarks

• Top Quark (t): With a charge of +2/3, the top quark is the heaviest of all quarks. It was the last to be discovered due to its large mass and extremely short lifetime.

• Bottom Quark (b): This quark has a charge of -1/3. Also known as the beauty quark, it is involved in high energy physics experiments that study CP violation (see below) and other phenomena.

These quarks interact through the strong nuclear force, mediated by gluons, and can combine to make Hadrons, in pairs (Mesons) or triplets (Baryons).

---

CP symmetry suggests that the laws of physics should be the same if a particle is replaced by its antiparticle and if its spatial coordinates are reversed. However, CP violation occurs when this is not the case, and the laws of physics differ for a particle and its CP-transformed counterpart

The properties of quarks, such as mass, electric charge, and interactions, are fundamental to the structure of matter and the universe’s dynamics as understood by modern physics.

For each flavour of quark there is an anti-quark.

---