• Question: What is a quark? What is it made up of?

    Asked by dizzyg12 to Dilwar, Lou, Rachel, Simon, Susan on 19 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Simon Langley-Evans

      Simon Langley-Evans answered on 19 Nov 2013:

      Quarks are subatomic particles and I have no idea what they are made of (goes beyond my physics dizzyg). Quarks come together to form larger particles called hadrons which are the building blocks of protons and neutrons in the atom.

    • Photo: Susan Skelton

      Susan Skelton answered on 20 Nov 2013:

      Quarks are elementary particles – this means that we don’t know what is inside them. We’ve never been able to look and find out, so for now, we assume that they cannot be split up into anything smaller.

      There are six known types of quark: they are called “up”, “down”, “top”, “bottom”, “charm” and “strange” – fantastic names, I think!

      Quarks join together to make hadron particles. Hadrons include particles like protons and neutrons. A proton is made up of two “up” quarks and a “down” quark; a neutron is made of one “up” quark and two “down” quarks.

      Protons and neutrons then combine to form atoms, which are the building blocks of everything!

      We still don’t know what is inside quarks, and lots of scientists have different ideas about this. Some people think that quarks are the smallest particles there are, so there is only quark inside quark! Others think that they might be made of up tiny strings! We’ll just have to wait and see!

Comments