Quarks Essay essays

Quarks Essay essays Physicists are always looking for particles too small to be seen by the human eye. In one such search 'cosmic' rays were discovered using a cloud chamber experiment. These perviously undetected rays contained many elementary particles. The newly encountered particles were found to combine to make sub-atomic particles, that were later divided into groups classified as bayons, mesons, leptons and bosons. Leptons include the electron and neutrino, bosons include protons and neutrons. Most of the new particles were bosons. The bosons all had similar properties which were grouped into a system called the eightfold way. Physicists began to wonder if the behaviour of these new particles were determined by smaller particles within. These theoretical particles were named quarks. The name quark was a nonsense name taken from a phrase in a book. There are six known types of quarks, called flavours. These flavours are grouped into pairs; up down, strange/ charmed, top bottom (sometimes beauty truth). Each quark also has a corresponding anti-quark. Because the charge of quarks is only a fraction they are never found alone. The first pair of quarks found were the up down pair. Their names have no significant meaning because they have no directional orientation in space.(2) Each pair has a complementary total charge of 2/3 and -1/3. The up quark has a charge equal to positive two thirds of an electron and the down quark has a charge equal to negative one third of an electron. A proton is comprised of two ups and one down, and is therefore positively charged. In comparison a Neutron is made up of two downs and one up making its charge neutral. There was a time at the very beginning of the universe, which the electroweak and electromagnetic forces separated, leaving four separate forces. The weakest force only acts over a short distance and governs radio activity. The more common electromagnetic forces govern e ...