Quarks: The Building Blocks of Protons and Neutrons

Quarks are fundamental particles that combine to form protons, neutrons, and other hadrons.
They come in six “flavors”: up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom.
Protons are made of two up quarks and one down quark, while neutrons have two downs and one up.
Quarks are held together by the strong force, carried by particles called gluons.
Unlike electrons, quarks are never found alone—they’re always confined inside larger particles.
Each quark carries a fractional electric charge, like +2/3 or –1/3, unlike whole-number charges.
The top quark is the heaviest fundamental particle ever discovered.
Quarks can change “flavor” through the weak nuclear force, key to radioactive processes.
They are central to understanding the structure of matter at the smallest scales.
Without quarks, atoms—and the universe as we know it—could not exist.