Quark Flavors and Colors
Quarks are described as coming in six different flavors, but each quark has an anti-quark, so there are also six different anti-flavors. The six quark flavors are named up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top;the six anti-flavors, anti-up, anti-down, anti-strange, anti-charm, anti-bottom and anti-top.
Protons are viewed as being constructed of two up-quarks and one down-quark. Up-quarks have an electric charge of +2e/3 and down-quarks have an electric charge of -e/3. Adding these charges up, we get a net charge of +1e for a proton. Neutrons are viewed as being constructed of two down-quarks and one up-quark, in which the electric charges add up to 0 (zero).
Each of the six flavors of quarks can have three different colors: red, blue and yellow. There are, of course, also anti-colors: anti-red, anti-blue and anti-yellow. The quark forces (strong force) bind quarks together only in colorless combinations of three quarks (baryons), quark-antiquark pairs (mesons) and possibly larger combinations such as the pentaquark that could also meet the colorless requirement.
Quarks undergo transformations by the exchange of W bosons. These transformations determine the rate and nature of the decay of hadrons by the weak interaction (radioactive decay).
This post was reblogged from Qu4ntum Th3ory.
