Standard Model of Particle Physics

Four types of particles are color coded: blue-quarks, cyan-leptons, green-gauge bosons, chartreuse-scalar bosons

Sometimes the Leptons and Quarks are thought of as “matter particles” and the Bosons are thought of as “force particles”.

Quarks ( $u, d, c, s, d, t, b$ )

u – up
d – down
c – charm
s – strange
t- top
b- bottom

Leptons ( $e, \mu, \tau, \nu_e, \nu_{\mu}, \nu_{\tau}$ )

Gauge Bosons ( $g, \gamma, Z, W$ )

Scalar Bosons ( $H$ )

Building “stuff”

Proton

A proton is two up quarks, one down quark and the gluons involved in binding the three quarks together. Three quarks must be of three different colors with each cork having a unique color, but there is no specification requiring s particular quark to take a certain color.

Neutron

A free Neutron will break down into a proton, an electron and an antineutrino and the half-life for this is 614 seconds.

Electron

An electron that is free, that is to say it is not in an orbit around a nucleus, appears to be unsplittable. Therefore it is considered to be an elementary particle.

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