What are the quarks?

Quarks are types of elementary particle. They actually belong to Fermion group. There are basically two main groups of elementary particles - Fermions and Bosons. Let's  talk about them.

History

Our whole universe is made up on two fundamental things - Particle and Force. In the 20th century, there were only two known force. Electromagnetism, which was invented in 1832 and Gravity, which was discovered by Sir Issac Newton in 17th century. Then a question arrived. where did these force come from? Is there any particles that carry these forces? In 1926, Gilbert N. Lewis introduced the term "Photon" which carries the electromagnetic force. Few years ago, Dr. Albert Einstein gave the general theory of relativity, in 1915, saying that gravity was not a force. He proposed the idea of gravitational wave for gravitation. Once scientists got the concept of photon, carrier of a fundamental force, they thought, there is another particle that carries gravitational wave. Then the term "Graviton" came out. In the further time, proton & neutron were found divisible. They (Proton & Neutron) are made with quarks. Quarks are belong to the Fermion group. The term took after the name of Italian physicist Enrico Fermi.

Particle Classification

As we said before, all the elementary particles belong to two main groups. The fermions follow the Fermi-Dirac Statistics and the Boson (The term "Boson" took after the name of Bengali Physicist Satyendra Nath Bose) follow the Bose-Einstein Statistics. The fermions take part in creation of matter where as the Bosons carry the fundamental forces (Strong Nuclear Force, Weak Nuclear Force, Electromagnetic Force & Gravitational Force). 

Fermions

Fermion is a group of particles that are used to create matters. There are two sub-groups in the main  Fermion group. Those are Quarks and Leptons. The main difference between quarks and leptons is, the quarks can feel the strong force, but the leptons don't.

Types of Quarks

There are basically six types of quarks - Up, Charm, Strange, Top, Down & Bottom. All of these quarks have the same spin of 1/2. But the charge isn't same at all. The electrostatic charge of Up, Charm and Top quark is +2/3 and -1/3 of the rests. 

Strange quark is much similar to the Down quark but a little bit heavy. Same thing goes for the Charm and Up. Everything is same except the mass. Charm is heavier than Up. Top is the heaviest quark with a mass of 173.0±0.4 GeV/c². As we know there are anti-particles for every particles, there are anti-quarks too. One quark and one anti-quark make a Hadron. 

So, basically this was a little bit about the quarks. See you soon. Happy reading.