Quarks are elementary particles.
Quark is an English term that, in any case, is recognized by the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) . It is a concept that is used in the field of physics to name a class of elementary particle , whose existence never occurs in isolation but rather a quark is always associated with another quark.
Elementary particles are those that do not have simpler components. Currently, scientists recognize quarks, gauge bosons and leptons as the only members of this group .
The main peculiarity of quarks is that they are the only elements that develop the four types of fundamental interactions that a particle can carry out. This means that quarks can carry out gravitational interactions, electromagnetic interactions, weak nuclear interactions and strong nuclear interactions.
Types of quarks
Scientists recognize six types of quarks: bottom quark , down quark , up quark , top quark , strange quark , and charm quark . Quarks usually associate in groups of two or three. It is believed that groups of up to five quarks may exist, but scientific evidence to support this hypothesis still needs to be developed.
-The bottom quark belongs to the third generation, it is one of the most massive and is identified by having an electric charge equal to -1/3 of what the elementary charge is.
-The down quark is also known by the name "down quark." It must be emphasized that it is part of the so-called first generation, that its electrical charge is equal to – 1/3 and that it has a red, blue or green charge.
-The quark above must be said that, along with the previous type, it was discovered in the 1960s by the American physicists Murray Gell-Mann (1929) and George Zweig (1937). It also responds to the name "up quark", it is part of the first generation of quarks and its electric charge is equal to + 2/3.
-The top quark , also known as "top quark", is part of the third generation and is characterized by having an electric charge of +2/3. It has the particularity of being the most massive of all the types of quarks that exist and we must know that it was the last to be recognized, specifically it was discovered in 1995 at the Fermi National High Energy Laboratory in Chicago.
-The strange quark has an electric charge equal to -1/3, it is also called "strange quark" and is part of the second generation. It has a color charge and was discovered in 1964 by the aforementioned physicist Murray Gell-Mann.
-The charm or enchanted quark , for its part, also belongs to the second generation and its electrical charge is +2/3.
Quarks carry out the four fundamental types of interactions.
The hadrons
Groups of quarks are generally known as hadrons . Depending on the number of quarks in each one, hadrons are called different names: mesons (two quarks), baryons (three quarks) or pentaquarks (five quarks).
The combination of the different kinds of quarks allows the formation of other types of subatomic particles, such as neutrons or protons .