When I studied physics and chemistry in school I was taught that atoms are composed of protons, nuetrons, and electrons, and that their interactions can explain chemistry and chemical interactions. Now I understand that this is either wildly oversimplified or wildly out of date. Would somebody be able to catch me up, simply, on what the smallest building blocks of out world are and how they interact to create matter?
In: Physics
Close enough actually to still explain what happens in chemistry and with chemical reactions.
Protons and neutrons are not actually elementary particles though, they are composed of three quarks each, two up quarks and a down quark for a proton, and one up quark and two down quarks for a neutron. But unless you get into high energy particle physics, that doesn’t really make a difference from what you knew before.
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