People have long asked:

"What is the world made of?" and "What holds it together?"

What is the World Made of?

Why do so many things in this world share the same
characteristics?
People have come to realize that the matter of the
world is made from a few fundamental building
blocks of nature.
The word "fundamental" is key here. By
fundamental building blocks we mean objects that
are simple and structureless -- not made of
anything smaller.
Even in ancient times, people sought to organize the
world around them into fundamental elements, such
as earth, air, fire, and water.

Trivia: Who first classified the fundamental elements as earth, air, fire, and water?
The Greek thinker Empedocles first classified the fundamental elements
as fire, air, earth, and water, although our particular diagram reflects
Aristotle's classification.
Did you know?
The ancient Chinese believed that the five basic components (in Pinyin,
Wu Xing) of the physical universe were earth, wood, metal, fire, and
water. And in India, the Samkhya-karikas by Ishvarakrsna (c. 3rd
century AD) proclaims the five gross elements to be space, air, fire, water,
and earth.
Today we know that there is something more fundamental than earth, water, air, and
fire...

By convention there is color,

By convention sweetness,
By convention bitterness,
But in reality there are atoms and space.
-Democritus (c. 400 BCE)
Around 1900, people thought of atoms as
permeable balls with bits of electric charge
bouncing around inside.
But is the atom fundamental?

People soon realized that they could categorize atoms

into groups that shared similar chemical properties (as in
the Periodic Table of the Elements). This indicated that
atoms were made up of simpler building blocks, and that
it was these simpler building blocks in different
combinations that determined which atoms had which
chemical properties.

Moreover, experiments which "looked" into an atom using particle probes indicated that
atoms had structure and were not just squishy balls. These experiments helped scientists
determine that atoms have a tiny but dense, positive nucleus and a cloud of negative
electrons (e-).
Trivia: The term "atom" is a misnomer. Why?

The Greek root for the word atom, "atomon," means "that which cannot
be divided." But the entities we call atoms are made from more
fundamental particles!
Is the Nucleus Fundamental?

Because it appeared small, solid, and dense, scientists originally

thought that the nucleus was fundamental. Later, they discovered
that it was made of protons (p+), which are positively charged, and
neutrons (n), which have no charge.

So, then, are protons and neutrons fundamental?

Physicists have discovered that protons and neutrons are composed
of even smaller particles called quarks.
As far as we know, quarks are like points in geometry. They're not made up of anything
else.
After extensively testing this theory, scientists now suspect that quarks and the electron
(and a few other things we'll see in a minute) are fundamental.
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Want to see a particle physicist's idea of a
good pun?

The naming of quarks...

...began when, in 1964, Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig suggested that hundreds of
the particles known at the time could be explained as combinations of just three
fundamental particles. Gell-Mann chose the name "quarks," pronounced "kworks," for
these three particles, a nonsense word used by James Joyce in the novel Finnegan's
Wake:
"Three quarks for Muster Mark!"
In order to make their calculations work, the quarks had to be assigned fractional
electrical charges of 2/3 and -1/3. Such charges had never been observed before. Quarks
are never observed by themselves, and so initially these quarks were regarded as
mathematical fiction. Experiments have since convinced physicists that not only do
quarks exist, but there are six of them, not three.
How did quarks get their silly names?

There are six flavors of quarks. "Flavors" just means different kinds. The
two lightest are called up and down.
 The third quark is called strange. It was named after the "strangely" long
lifetime of the K particle, the first composite particle found to contain this
quark.

The fourth quark type, the charm quark, was named on a whim. It was
discovered in 1974 almost simultaneously at both the Stanford Linear
Accelerator Center (SLAC) and at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

The fifth and sixth quarks were sometimes called truth and beauty in the past, but even
physicists thought that was too cute.

The bottom quark was first discovered at Fermi National Lab (Fermilab) in 1977,
in a composite particle called Upsilon ( ).

The top quark was discovered last, also at Fermilab, in 1995. It is the most
massive quark. It had been predicted for a long time but had never been
observed successfully until then.

On March 2, 1995, Fermilab announced the discovery of the

top quark, the last of the six predicted quarks. The search
began in 1977 when physicists found the fifth quark, bottom,
at Fermilab. It took this long because the top quark was
much more massive than was originally imagined, so it
required a more powerful accelerator to create it.
Although the top quark decays too fast to be observed, it does leave
behind particles that give evidence of its existence - a top quark
"signature". The top quark can decay in more than one way. Since a top
quark appears only once in several billion collisions, it was necessary to
perform trillions of collisions.
Physicists still do not understand why the top is so massive. It is 40 times
heavier than the next heaviest quark and about 35,000 times heavier
than the up and down quarks that make up most of the matter we see
around us. In fact the question still remains why particles have such
different masses.
Like social elephants, quarks only exist in groups with other quarks and are never found
alone. Composite particles made of quarks are called

Although individual quarks have fractional electrical charges, they combine such that
hadrons have a net integer electric charge. Another property of hadrons is that they have
no net color charge even though the quarks themselves carry color charge (we will talk
more about this later).
There are two classes of hadrons (try putting your mouse on the elephants):
...are any hadron which is made of
three quarks (qqq). ...contain one quark (q) and one antiquark ( ).

B
ecause they are made of two up
quarks and one down quark (uud), One example of a meson is a pion ( ), which is
+

protons are baryons. So are made of an up quark and a down anitiquark. The
neutrons (udd). antiparticle of a meson just has its quark and
antiquark switched, so an antipion ( -
) is made up a
down quark and an up antiquark.
Because a meson consists of a particle and an
antiparticle, it is very unstable. The kaon (K-) meson
lives much longer than most mesons, which is why it
was called "strange" and gave this name to the
strange quark, one of its components.

A weird thing about hadrons is that only a very very very small part of the mass of
a hadron is due to the quarks in it.
A weird thing about hadrons is that only a very very very small part of
the mass of a hadron is due to the quarks in it. For example, a proton
(uud) has more mass than the sum of the masses of its quarks:

Most of the mass we observe in a hadron comes from its kinetic and
potential energy. These energies are converted into the mass of the
hadron as described by Einstein's equation that relates energy and mass,
E = mc2
The other type of matter particles are the leptons.
There are six leptons, three of which have electrical charge and three of which do not.
They appear to be point-like particles without internal structure. The best known lepton is
the electron (e-). The other two charged leptons are the muon( ) and the tau( ),
which are charged like electrons but have a lot more mass. The other leptons are the
three types of neutrinos ( ). They have no electrical charge, very little mass, and they
are very hard to find.
Quarks are sociable and only exist in composite particles with other quarks, whereas
leptons are solitary particles. Think of the charged leptons as independent cats with
associated neutrino fleas, which are very hard to see.

For each lepton there is a corresponding antimatter antilepton. Note that the anti-
electron has a special name, the "positron."
Trivia: "Lepton" comes from the Greek for "small mass," but this is a misnomer. Why?
Answer: Even though "lepton" comes from the Greek for "small mass", the tau lepton is
more than 3000 times as massive as the electron

The heavier leptons, the muon and the tau, are not found in ordinary matter at all. This is
because when they are produced they very quickly decay, or transform, into lighter
leptons. Sometimes the tau lepton will decay into a quark, an antiquark, and a tau
neutrino. Electrons and the three kinds of neutrinos are stable and thus the types we
commonly see around us.

When a heavy lepton decays, one of the particles it decays into is always its
corresponding neutrino. The other particles could be a quark and its antiquark, or
another lepton and its antineutrino.
Physicists have observed that some types of lepton decays are possible and some are
not. In order to explain this, they divided the leptons into three lepton families: the
electron and its neutrino, the muon and its neutrino, and the tau and its neutrino. The
number of members in each family must remain constant in a decay. (A particle and an
antiparticle in the same family "cancel out" to make the total of them equal zero.)
Although leptons are solitary, they are always loyal to their families!
Leptons are divided into three lepton families: the electron and its
neutrino, the muon and its neutrino, and the tau and its neutrino.
We use the terms "electron number," "muon number," and "tau number" to refer to the
lepton family of a particle. Electrons and their neutrinos have electron number +1,
positrons and their antineutrinos have electron number -1, and all other particles have
electron number 0. Muon number and tau number operate analogously with the other
two lepton families.
One important thing about leptons, then, is that electron number, muon number, and tau
number are always conserved when a massive lepton decays into smaller ones.
Let's take an example decay.
A muon decays into a muon neutrino, an electron, and an electron antineutrino:

As you can see, electron, muon, and tau numbers are conserved. These and
other conservation laws are what we believe define whether or not a given
hypothetical lepton decay is possible.

Neutrinos

Neutrinos are, as we've

said, a type of lepton. Since
they have no electrical or
strong charge they almost
never interact with any other
particles. Most neutrinos pass
right through the earth
without ever interacting with a
single atom of it.

Neutrinos are produced in a

variety of interactions, especially in particle decays. In fact, it was through a careful study
of radioactive decays that physicists hypothesized the neutrino's existence.
For example: (1) In a radioactive nucleus, a neutron at rest (zero momentum) decays,
releasing a proton and an electron. (2) Because of the law of conservation of momentum,
the resulting products of the decay must have a total momentum of zero, which the
observed proton and electron clearly do not. (3) Therefore, we need to infer the presence
of another particle with appropriate momentum to balance the event. (4) We hypothesize
that an antineutrino was released; experiments have confirmed that this is indeed what
happens.

Because neutrinos were produced in great abundance in the early universe and
rarely interact with matter, there are a lot of them in the Universe. Their tiny mass but
huge numbers may contribute to total mass of the universe and affect its expansion.
Now we think we have a good idea of what the world is made of: quarks and leptons.
So...
What holds it together?
The universe, which we know and love, exists
because the fundamental particles interact.
These interactions include attractive and
repulsive forces, decay, and annihilation.
There are four fundamental interactions
between particles, and all forces in the
world can be attributed to these four
interactions!
That's right: Any force you can think of --
friction, magnetism, gravity, nuclear decay,
and so on -- is caused by one of these four
fundamental interactions.
What's the difference between a force and an
interaction?
This is a hard distinction to make. Strictly
speaking, a force is the effect on a particle
due to the presence of other particles. The
interactions of a particle include all the
forces that affect it, but also include decays and
annihilations that the particle might go through. (We will spend
the next chapter discussing these decays and
annihilations in more depth.)
The reason this gets confusing is that most people, even most
physicists, usually use "force" and "interaction"
interchangeably, although "interaction" is more correct. For
instance, we call the particles which carry the interactions force carrier particles. You will
usually be okay using the terms interchangeably, but you should know that they are
different.
You can think about forces as being analogous to the following situation:
Two people are standing on an ice pond. One person moves their arm and is pushed
backwards; a moment later the other person grabs at an invisible object and is driven
backwards. Even though you cannot see a basketball, you can assume that one person
threw a basketball to the other person because you see its effect on the people. (Click on
the checkmark or cross below the animation in order to make the basketball appear or
disappear.)

It turns out that all interactions which affect matter particles are due to an exchange of
force carrier particles, a different type of particle altogether. These particles are like
basketballs tossed between matter particles (which are like the basketball players). What
we normally think of as "forces" are actually the effects of force carrier particles on
matter particles.
The basketball animation is, of course, a very crude analogy since it can only explain
repulsive forces and gives no hint of how exchanging particles can result in attractive
forces.
We see examples of attractive forces in everyday life (such as magnets and gravity), and
so we generally take it for granted that an object's presence can just affect another
object. It is when we approach the deeper question, "How can two objects affect one
another without touching?" that we propose that the invisible force could be an exchange
of force carrier particles. Particle physicists have found that we can explain the force of
one particle acting on another to INCREDIBLE precision by the exchange of these force
carrier particles.
One important thing to know about force carriers is that a particular force carrier particle
can only be absorbed or produced by a matter particle which is affected by that
particular force. For instance, electrons and protons have electric charge, so they can
produce and absorb the electromagnetic force carrier, the photon. Neutrinos, on the
other hand, have no electric charge, so they cannot absorb or produce photons.

The electromagnetic force causes like-charged things to repel and

oppositely-charged things to attract. Many everyday forces, such as
friction, and even magnetism, are caused by the electromagnetic, or
E-M force. For instance, the force that keeps you from falling through
the floor is the electromagnetic force which causes the atoms making
up the matter in your feet and the floor to resist being displaced.

The carrier particle of the electromagnetic force is the photon ( ). Photons of different
energies span the electromagnetic spectrum of x rays, visible light, radio waves, and so
forth.
Photons have zero mass, as far as we know, and always travel at the "speed of light", c,
which is about 300,000,000 meters per second, or 186,000 miles per second, in a
vacuum.

Atoms usually have the same numbers of protons and electrons. They are
electrically neutral, therefore, because the positive protons cancel out the
negative electrons. Since they are neutral, what causes them to stick
together to form stable molecules?
The answer is a bit strange: we've discovered
that the charged parts of one atom can interact
with the charged parts of another atom. This
allows different atoms to bind together, an
effect called the residual electromagnetic
force.
So the electromagnetic force is what allows
atoms to bond and form molecules, allowing
the world to stay together and create the
matter you interact with all of the time.
Amazing, isn't it? All the structures of the world
exist simply because protons and electrons
have opposite charges!
See? Now you know the meaning of life! The Meaning of Life
Life is just a neat example of electromagnetic force!
We have another problem with atoms,
though. What binds the nucleus together?
The nucleus of an atom consists of a bunch of
protons and neutrons crammed together. Since
neutrons have no charge and the positively-
charged protons repel one another, why doesn't the
nucleus blow apart?
We cannot account for the nucleus staying together with just
electromagnetic force. What else could there be? Gravity?
Nope! The gravitational force is far too weak to overpower the
electromagnetic force.
So how can we account for this dilemma?

To understand what is happening inside the nucleus, we

need to understand more about the quarks that make
up the protons and neutrons in the nucleus. Quarks
have electromagnetic charge, and they also have an
altogether different kind of charge called color charge.
The force between color-charged particles is very
strong, so this force is "creatively" called

The strong force holds quarks together to form hadrons, so its carrier
particles are whimsically called gluons because they so tightly "glue"
quarks together. (Other name candidates included the "hold-on,"
the "duct-tape-it-on," and the "tie-it-on!")

Color charge behaves differently than electromagnetic charge.

Gluons, themselves, have color charge, which is weird and not at all like photons which
do not have electromagnetic charge. And while quarks have color charge, composite
particles made out of quarks have no net color charge (they are color neutral). For this
reason, the strong force only takes place on the really small level of quark interactions,
which is why you are not aware of the strong force in your everyday life.
Color charge
Quarks and gluons are color-charged particles. Just as
electrically-charged particles interact by exchanging
photons in electromagnetic interactions, color-charged
particles exchange gluons in strong interactions. When two
quarks are close to one another, they exchange gluons
and create a very strong color force field that binds the
quarks together. The force field gets stronger as the
quarks get further apart. Quarks constantly change their color charges as
they exchange gluons with other quarks.

How does color charge work?

There are three color charges and three corresponding anticolor (complementary color)
charges. Each quark has one of the three color charges and each antiquark has one of the
three anticolor charges. Just as a mix of red, green, and blue light yields white light, in a
baryon a combination of "red," "green," and "blue" color charges is color neutral, and in
an antibaryon "antired," "antigreen," and "antiblue" is also color neutral. Mesons are color
neutral because they carry combinations such as "red" and "antired."
Because gluon-emission and -absorption always changes
color, and -in addition - color is a conserved quantity -
gluons can be thought of as carrying a color and an
anticolor charge. Since there are nine possible color-
anticolor combinations we might expect nine different
gluon charges, but the mathematics works out such that
there are only eight combinations. Unfortunately, there is
no intuitive explanation for this result.
Important Disclaimer:
"Color charge" has nothing to do with the visible colors, it
is just a convenient naming convention for a
mathematical system physicists developed to explain
their observations about quarks in hadrons.

Color-charged particles cannot be found individually. For

this reason, the color-charged quarks are confined in
groups (hadrons) with other quarks. These composites are
color neutral.
The development of the Standard Model's theory of the
strong interactions reflected evidence that quarks combine
only into baryons (three quark objects), and mesons
(quark-antiquark objects), but not, for example, four-quark objects. Now
we understand that only baryons (three different colors) and mesons (color
and anticolor) are color-neutral. Particles such as ud or uddd that cannot
be combined into color-neutral states are never observed.

Color-Force Field
The quarks in a given hadron madly exchange gluons. For this reason,
physicists talk about the color-force field which consists of the gluons
holding the bunch of quarks together.
If one of the quarks in a given hadron is pulled away from its neighbors,
the color-force field "stretches" between that quark and its neighbors. In
so doing, more and more energy is added to the color-force field as the
quarks are pulled apart. At some point, it is energetically cheaper for the
color-force field to "snap" into a new quark-antiquark pair. In so doing,
energy is conserved because the energy of the color-force field is
converted into the mass of the new quarks, and the color-force field can
"relax" back to an unstretched state.

Quarks cannot exist individually because the color force increases as they
are pulled apart.

Color charge is always conserved.

When a quark emits or absorbs a gluon, that quark's color must change in order to
conserve color charge. For example, suppose a red quark changes into a blue quark and
emits a red/antiblue gluon (the image below illustrates antiblue as yellow). The net color
is still red. This is because - after the emission of the gluon - the blue color of the quark
cancels with the antiblue color of the gluon. The remaining color then is the red color of
the gluon.

Quarks emit and absorb gluons very frequently within a

hadron, so there is no way to observe the color of an individual quark. Within a hadron,
though, the color of the two quarks exchanging a gluon will change in a way that keeps
the bound system in a color-neutral state.
So now we know that the strong force binds quarks together because
quarks have color charge. But that still does not explain what holds the
nucleus together, since positive protons repel each other with
electromagnetic force, and protons and neutrons are color-neutral.
So what holds the nucleus together? Huh?
The answer is that, in short, they don't call it the strong force for nothing. The strong
force between the quarks in one proton and the quarks in another proton is strong
enough to overwhelm the repulsive electromagnetic force.

This is called the residual strong interaction, and it is what "glues" the nucleus
together.

There are six kinds of quarks and six kinds of leptons. But all the
stable matter of the universe appears to be made of just the two
least-massive quarks (up quark and down quark), the least-
massive charged lepton (the electron), and the neutrinos.
Weak interactions are responsible for the decay of massive
quarks and leptons into lighter quarks and leptons. When
fundamental particles decay, it is very strange: we observe the
particle vanishing and being replaced by two or more different
particles. Although the total of mass and energy is conserved,
some of the original particle's mass is converted into kinetic
energy, and the resulting particles always have less mass than the
original particle that decayed.
The only matter around us that is stable is made
up of the smallest quarks and leptons, which cannot decay any further.

When a quark or lepton changes type (a muon changing to an electron,

for instance) it is said to change flavor.( Each of the quarks has a
different "flavor," which is just the term physicists use to distinguish
between the six types of quarks. For instance, the flavor of an up quark
is simply "up." Charged weak interactions can change the flavor of a
particle! And only charged weak interactions can do this. Weak
interactions which involve the neutral Z particle cannot change a
particle's flavor. Leptons also have a "flavor." In addition, they have electron number,
muon number, and tau number, as discussed earlier. While lepton flavor is changed by
weak interactions, the process conserved electron, muon, and tau numbers.) All flavor
changes are due to the weak interaction.
The carrier particles of the weak interactions are the W+, W-, and the Z particles. The
W's are electrically charged and the Z is neutral.
The Standard Model has united electromagnetic interactions and weak interactions into
one unified interaction called electroweak

In the Standard Model the weak and the electromagnetic interactions

have been combined into a unified electroweak theory.
Physicists had long believed that weak forces were closely related to
electromagnetic forces.
Eventually they discovered that at very short distances (about 10-18 meters) the strength
of the weak interaction is comparable to that of the electromagnetic. On the other hand,
at thirty times that distance (3x10-17 m) the strength of the weak interaction is 1/10,000th
than that of the electromagnetic interaction. At distances typical for quarks in a proton or
neutron (10-15 m) the force is even tinier.
Physicists concluded that, in fact, the weak and electromagnetic forces have essentially
equal strengths. This is because the strength of the interaction depends strongly on both
the mass of the force carrier and the distance of the interaction. The difference between
their observed strengths is due to the huge difference in mass between the W and Z
particles, which are very massive, and the photon, which has no mass as far as we know.

What about gravity?

Gravity is weird. It is clearly one of the fundamental interactions,
but the Standard Model cannot satisfactorily explain it. This is one
of those major unanswered problems in physics today.
In addition, the gravity force carrier particle has not been found.
Such a particle, however, is predicted to exist and may someday
be found: the graviton.
Fortunately, the effects of gravity are extremely tiny in most
particle physics situations compared to the other three
interactions, so theory and experiment can be compared without
including gravity in the calculations. Thus, the Standard Model
works without explaining gravity.
(I still don't get it.)>( We know how to calculate
gravitational forces, but we do not know how to integrate gravity into the
mathematics of the quantum theory of the Standard Model. (The fact that
we have not seen the graviton yet is not a surprise in the Standard Model,
because the graviton has extremely weak interactions, so is rarely
produced and rarely detected.)
In the same way that Isaac Newton's laws of mechanics were not wrong
but needed to be extended by Einstein to be more accurate about very
high velocities, we need to extend the Standard Model with a new theory
that will explain gravity thoroughly)

This is a summary of the different interactions, their force carrier particles, and
what particles they act on:
Which fundamental interaction is responsible for:
Friction?

Answer

Friction is caused by residual electromagnetic interactions between the atoms of

the two materials.

Nuclear bonding?

Answer

Nuclear bonding is caused by residual strong interactions between the various

parts of the nucleus.

Planetary orbits?

Answer

The planets orbit because of the gravity that attracts them to the sun! Even
though gravity is a relatively weak force, it still has very important effects on the
world.
Other questions:
Which interactions act on neutrinos?

Answer

Weak and Gravity

Which interaction has heavy carriers?

Answer

Weak (W+, W-, and Z)

Which interactions act on the protons in you?

Answer

All of them.

Which force carriers cannot be isolated? Why?

Answer

Gluons, because they carry color charge themselves.

Which force carriers have not been observed?

Answer

Gravitons (Gluons have been observed indirectly.)

One of the surprises of modern science is that atoms and sub-atomic particles do not
behave like anything we see in the everyday world. They are not small balls that bounce
around; they have wave properties. The Standard Model theory can mathematically
describe all the characteristics and interactions that we see for these particles, but our
everyday intuition will not help us on that tiny scale.

Physicists use the word "quantum,"

which means "broken into increments
or parcels," to describe the physics of
very small particles. This is because
certain properties only take on discrete
values. For example, you can only find
electric charges that are an integer
multiples of the electron's charge (or
1/3 and 2/3 for quarks <While quarks
have a fractional electric charge of 2/3 and
1/3 electron charges, they are only found in
composite particles that have an integral
electric charge. You can never observe an
isolated quark.>). Quantum mechanics
describes particle interactions.

A few of the important quantum numbers of particles are:

Electric charge. Quarks may have 2/3 or 1/3 electron charges, but they only
form composite particles with integer electric charge. All particles other than
quarks have integer multiples of the electron's charge.
Color charge. A quark carries one of three color charges and a gluon carries one
of eight color-anticolor charges. All other particles are color neutral.
Flavor. Flavor distinguishes quarks (and leptons) from one another.
Spin. Spin is a bizarre but important physical quantity. Large objects like planets or
marbles may have angular momentum and a magnetic field because they spin. Since
particles also to appear have their own angular momentum and tiny magnetic moments,
physicists called this particle property spin. This is a misleading term since particles are
not actually "spinning." Spin is quantized to units of 0, 1/2, 1, 3/2 (times Planck's
Constant,< Spin is the internal angular momentum of a particle, in units of .
 = 1.055 x 10-34 J s. This is Planck's Constant. > ) and so on.
We can use these quantum particle properties to categorize the particles we find.
At one time, physicists thought that no two particles in the same quantum state could
exist in the same place at the same time. This is called the Pauli Exclusion Principle,
and it explains why there is chemistry.
But it has been since discovered that a certain group of particles do not obey this
principle. Particles that do obey the Pauli Exclusion Principle are called fermions, and
those that do not are called bosons.
Imagine there is a large family of identical fermion siblings spending the night at the
Fermion Motel, and there is another large family of identical boson siblings spending the
night at the Boson Inn. Fermions behave like squabbling siblings, and not only refuse to
share a room but also insist on rooms as far as possible from each other. On the other
hand, boson siblings prefer to share the same room. (Since fermions rent more rooms
than bosons, motel owners prefer doing business with fermions. Some motels even
refuse to rent rooms to bosons!)

A fermion is any particle that has an odd Bosons are those particles which have an
half-integer (like 1/2, 3/2, and so forth) spin. integer spin (0, 1, 2...).
Quarks and leptons, as well as most All the force carrier particles are bosons,
composite particles, like protons and as are those composite particles with an
neutrons, are fermions. even number of fermion particles (like
mesons).
For reasons we do not fully understand, a
consequence of the odd half-integer spin is
that fermions obey the Pauli Exclusion
Principle and therefore cannot co-exist in the
same state at same location at the same
time.
*
The predicted graviton has a spin of 2.
The nucleus of an atom is a fermion or boson depending on whether the total number of
its protons and neutrons is odd or even, respectively. Recently, physicists have
discovered that this has caused some very strange behavior in certain atoms under
unusual conditions, such as very cold helium.< Helium has a boson nucleus (two
neutrons and two protons), so it does not ever crystallize, even when cooled to almost
absolute zero. It becomes a "superfluid," which is a liquid with strange properties such as
having zero viscosity and no surface tension. We will probably discover other strange
properties of atoms with boson nuclei in the future.>
ALOT TO REMEMBER

We have answered the questions, "What

is the world made of?" and "What holds it
together?"
The world is made of six quarks and six leptons.
Everything we see is a conglomeration of quarks and
leptons.
There are four fundamental forces and there are force
carrier particles associated with each force.

We have also discussed how a particle's state (set of quantum numbers) may affect
how it interacts with other particles.
These are the essential aspects of the Standard Model. It is the
most complete explanation of the fundamental particles and
interactions to date.
Names and descriptions are only a small part of any physical theory; the concepts,
rather than physics vocabulary, are the critical elements.
The Contemporary Physics Education Project has
summarized the essential aspects of the Standard
Model in a single chart. This site includes an
electronic version of this chart, but you can also order
your own copy from CPEP.
Radioactive particles
Scientists eventually identified several distinct types of radiation, the particles resulting
from radioactive decays. The three types of radiation were named after the first three

letters of the Greek alphabet: (alpha), (beta), and (gamma).

Alpha particles are helium nuclei (2 p, 2 n):

Beta particles are speedy electrons:

Gamma radiation is a high-energy photon:

These three forms of radiation can be distinguished
by a magnetic field since
• the positively-charged alpha particles
curve in one direction,
• the negatively-charged beta particles
curve in the opposite direction,
• and the electrically-neutral gamma
radiation doesn't curve at all.
Alpha particles can be stopped by a sheet of paper,
beta particles by aluminum, and gamma radiation
by a block of lead. Gamma radiation can penetrate very far into a material, and so it is
gamma radiation that poses the most danger when working with radioactive materials,
although all types of radiation are very dangerous. Sadly, it took scientists many years to
realize the perils of radioactivity...
We will answer these questions soon, but first we need to look into the nature of the
nucleus and quantum mechanics.
Protons are positive and electrically repel one another. A nucleus
would blow apart if it weren't "glued" together by the gluon particles
which affect every part of the nucleus. This is called the residual
strong force.
Think of a nucleus as a tightly coiled spring which is the electrical
repulsion, held in place by a very big rope which is the residual strong
force. Even though there is a lot of stored-up energy in the spring, it
can't release the energy because the rope is too strong.
Subatomic particles do not behave like everyday objects. We can't really say what a
particle will do, only what a particle might do. Particles move around like everyday
objects and have momentum, but they also have wave properties. Quantum mechanics,
the mathematical basis for our theories about particles, explains the behavior of particles
in terms of probabilities.
Since particles are wave-like, it is impossible to know both
their position and their
momenta. While it is
easier to think of particles
as point-like spheres (which is how we have illustrated
them throughout this site) this is misleading since they
are better thought of as fuzzy regions in which you are
most likely to find the particle.

Protons and neutrons migrate around inside a nucleus.

There is a tiny, tiny chance that a conglomeration of two
protons and two neutrons (which form an alpha particle)
may, at the same instant, actually migrate outside the
nucleus. There is a greater chance of this happening in a
large nucleus than in a small one.
The alpha particle would then be free of the residual strong force trapping it
inside the nucleus, and like a suddenly released spring, the charged alpha
particle would fly away from the nucleus.

This idea that "if it can happen, it will happen!" is fundamental to

quantum mechanics. For some atoms there is a certain probability that it will undergo
radioactive decay due to the possibility that the nucleus may --for the shortest of
instants-- exist in a state that allows it to blow apart. You cannot predict when a
particular atom will decay, but you can determine the chance that it will decay in a
certain period of time.
While the nucleus of an atom can decay into a less massive nucleus by splitting apart,
how does a fundamental particle decay into other fundamental particles? Fundamental
particles cannot split apart, because they have no constituents, but rather they somehow
turn into other particles.
It turns out that when a fundamental particle decays, it changes
into a less massive particle and a force-carrier particle (always a
W boson for fundamental particle decays). These force carriers
may then re-emerge as other particles. So, a particle does not just
change into another particle type; there is an intermediate force-
carrier particle which mediates particle decays. A charm quark (c)
In many cases, these temporary force-carrier particles seem to decays into a less
violate the conservation of energy because their mass is greater massive particle
than the available energy in the reaction. However, these particles (strange quark, s) and
exist so briefly that, because of Heisenberg's Uncertainty a force carrier particle
Principle(In 1927, Werner Heisenberg determined that it is (W boson) which then
impossible to measure both a particle's position and its decays to u and d
momentum exactly. The more precisely we determine one, the quarks.
less we know about the other. This is called the Heisenberg
Uncertainty Principle, and it is a fundamental property of quantum
mechanics.

The precise relation is:

This constant is Planck's constant divided by two;

Planck's constant is represented by the symbol , or
"h-bar," and equals 1.05 x 10-34 joule-seconds, or 6.58
x 10-22 MeV-seconds.
The act of measuring a particle's position will affect
your knowledge of its momentum, and vice-versa.
We can also express this principle in terms of energy
and time:

This means that if a particle exists for a very brief time,

you cannot precisely determine its energy. A short-
lived particle could have a tremendously uncertain
energy, which leads to the idea of virtual particles.
), no rules are broken. These are called virtual particles.
Particles decay via force carrier particles.
But in some cases a particle may decay
via a force-carrier particle with more mass
then the initial particle. The intermediate
particle is immediately transformed into
lower-mass particles. These short-lived
high-mass force-carrier particles seem to
violate the laws of conservation of energy
and mass -- their mass just can't come
out of nowhere!
A result of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle is that these
high-mass particles may come into being if they are incredibly
short-lived. In a sense, they escape reality's notice. Such particles
are called virtual particles.
Virtual particles do not violate the conservation of energy. The
kinetic energy plus mass of the initial decaying particle and the
final decay products is equal. The virtual particles exist for such a
short time that they can never be observed.
Most particle processes are mediated by virtual-carrier particles.
Examples include neutron beta decay, the production of charm
particles, and the decay of an eta-c particle, all of which we will
explore in depth soon.
Strong, electromagnetic, and weak interactions all cause particle
decays. However, only weak interactions can cause the decay of
fundamental particles.
Weak Decays:
Only weak interactions can change a fundamental particle
into another type of particle. Physicists call particle types
"flavors." The weak interaction can change a charm quark
into a strange quark while emitting a virtual W boson
(charm and strange are flavors). Only the weak
interaction (via the W boson) can change flavor and allow
the decay of a truly fundamental particle.
Electromagnetic Decays:

The 0
(neutral pion) is a meson. The quark and
antiquark can annihilate; from the annihilation come two
photons. This is an example of an electromagnetic decay.
Strong Decays:

The particle is a
meson. It can
undergo a strong
decay into two gluons
(which emerge as
hadrons).

The strong force-

carrier particle, the
gluon, mediates
decays involving
color changes. The
weak force-carrier
particles, W+ and
W-, mediate decays
in which particles
change flavor (and
electric charge).

Annihilations are of course not decays, but they too occur via virtual particles. In an
annihilation a matter and an antimatter particle completely annihilate into energy.
That is, they interact with each other, converting the energy of their previous existence
into a very energetic force carrier particle (a gluon, W/Z, or photon). These force carriers,
in turn, are transformed into other particles.
Quite often, physicists will annihilate two particles at tremendous energies in order to
create new, massive particles.

This is an actual bubble chamber photograph of an antiproton (entering from the bottom
of the picture), colliding with a proton (at rest), and annihilating. Eight pions were
produced in this annihilation. One decayed into a +
and a . The paths of positive and
negative pions curve opposite ways in the magnetic field, and the neutral leaves no
track.

Bubble chambers are an older type of detector. As charged particles pass through a
bubble chamber, they leave a trail of tiny bubbles that make it easy to track the
particles.
We have talked a lot about decays and annihilations, so let's now look at some examples
of these processes.
A neutron (udd) decays to a proton (uud), an electron, and an antineutrino. This is called
neutron beta decay. (The term beta ray was used for electrons in nuclear decays
because they didn't know they were electrons!)

• Frame 1: The neutron (charge = 0) made of up, down, down quarks.

• Frame 2: One of the the down quarks is transformed into an up
quark. Since the down quark has a charge of -1/3 and and the up
quark has a charge of 2/3, it follows that this process is mediated by
a virtual W- particle, which carries away a (-1) charge (thus charge
is conserved!)
• Frame 3: The new up quark rebounds away from the emitted W-.
The neutron now has become a proton.

• Frame 4: An electron and antineutrino emerge from the virtual W-

boson.
• Frame 5: The proton, electron, and the antineutrino move away
from one another.
The intermediate stages of this process occur in about a billionth of a billionth of a
billionth of a second, and are not observable.

Electron / positron annhiliation

When an electron and positron (antielectron) collide at high energy, they can
annihilate to produce charm quarks which then produce D+ and D- mesons.

• Frame 1: The electron and positron zoom towards their certain

doom.
• Frame 2: They collide and annihilate, releasing tremendous amounts
 of energy.
• Frame 3: The electron and positron have annihilated into a photon,
or a Z particle, both of which may be virtual force carrier
particles.
• Frame 4: A charm quark and a charm antiquark emerge from the
virtual force carrier particle.
• Frame 5: They begin moving apart, stretching the color force field
(gluon field) between them.

• Frame 6: The quarks move apart, further spreading their force field.
• Frame 7: The energy in the force field increases with the separation
between the quarks. When there is sufficient energy in the force
field, the energy is converted into a quark and an anti-quark
(remember ).
• Frames 8-10: The quarks separate into distinct, color-neutral
particles: the D+ (a charm and anti-down quark) and D- (an anti-
charm and down quark) mesons.
The intermediate stages of this process occur in about a billionth of a billionth of a
billionth of a second, and are not observable.

Top production

A quark (from within a proton) and an antiquark (from an

antiproton) colliding at high energy can annihilate to produce a top
quark and a top antiquark, which then decay into other particles.

• Frame 1: One of the proton's quarks and one of the antiproton's

antiquarks are heading toward a collision.
• Frame 2: The quark and antiquark collide and annihilate....
 • Frame 3: ...into virtual gluons.
• Frame 4: A top and antitop quark emerge from the gluon cloud.
• Frame 5: These quarks begin moving apart, stretching the color
force field (gluon field) between them.

• Frame 6: Before the top quark and antiquark have moved very far,
they decay into a bottom and antibottom quark (respectively) with
the emission of W force carrier particles.
• Frame 7: The new bottom quark and antibottom quark rebound away
from the emitted W force carrier particles.

• Frame 8: An electron and neutrino emerge from the virtual W- boson,

and an up quark and down antiquark emerge from the virtual W +
boson.
• Frame 9: The bottom quark and bottom antiquark, electron,
neutrino, up quark, and down antiquark all move away from one
another.
What is wrong with this picture? [ We ignored the color force field that develops as the b
quark and b antiquark move apart. This energy is converted into another quark/antiquark
pair; eventually only distinct, color-neutral particles emerge (B mesons). The same is true
for the u quark and d antiquark. To see what really happens look at an analogous process
in the picture of e+ and e- --> D+ and D-.]
The intermediate stages of this process occur in about a billionth of a billionth of a
billionth of a second, and are not observable.
 THE END

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