So yeah, protons and neutrons have 3 quarks, with spins, and rgb colors… what’s all of that?
In: Physics
They are components of atoms.
Once we thought that atoms were the smallest thing then we realized that if we hit them hard enough they break up into smaller pieces and we call those things quarks.
They are fundamental particles that other particles like protons and neutrons are made of. To the best of hour knowledge the are fundamental patterns that can’t be broken down more.
The spin has a bit to do with the regular rotation of the object. It has really more to how the particle interacts magnetically with the surroundings.
The color change is a property quarks and gluons have that relates do the strong interaction. It has nothing to do with colors as we normally use it. It is an analogy because of how the combined effect of the property of multiple particles. It is a bit like how color mixing works. So tool to help explain int and make it a bit easier to talk about.
You can compare it to feeling blue is an ideom to describe sadness.
**Explanation #1**
Matter is made of molecules.
Molecules are made of atoms.
Atoms are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons.
Protons and neutrons are made of quarks.
As far as science knows today, particle physics stops there. We have not been able to confirm any more elementary particles beyond quarks and electrons.
Note: Obviously, particle physics is a *lot* more complicated than that. E.g. quarks and electrons are a type of elementary particle called fermions which is different from another set of elementary particles called bosons, and why and how they’re different is complex, but the bottom line is the various sorts of bosons (photons, gluons, etc.) are not more or less fundamental or elementary than the various sorts of fermions (quarks, electrons). So “it stops there” is still accurate for ELI5.
(Please don’t bring up string theory.)
**Explanation #2**
In the *Star Trek* universe, Quark’s (with an apostrophe) are a franchised chain of drinking establishments (known officially as “Quark’s Bar, Grill, Gaming House and Holosuite Arcade”) with 21 locations across the Alpha Quadrant . . . and a “Quark’s Express” on the Bolian homeworld. Other related businesses included “Uncle Quark’s Youth Casino” and “Quark’s Starfleet Experience Bar & Grill.”
When you get down to quantum stuff, it’s best to just stop thinking of things in a way that normally makes sense. Take spin, which is a quantum property of particles. It’s not like the particle is spinning like a top… but it also kind of is? Best way to think of it is that it’s like electric charges – it’s just a property that particles have. Certain types of particles have whole number spin, others have fractional spin. The spin number will tell you how that particle acts in certain conditions. Stuff with fractional spin makes up what we call *matter* and is all the hard, physical stuff that takes up space. Integer spin doesn’t take up space – it can overlap and occupy the same space, like photons.
Quarks have 1/2 spin, but they can be combined in ways to create particles with integer spin – eg: a quark and an antiquark both have 1/2 so together they have a spin of 1. That composite particle – a meson – acts like photons and doesn’t take up space. Protons and neutrons have three quarks, which adds up to 3/2 spin, making protons and neutrons *fermions* which take up space.
Color charge has nothing to do with visible color. It’s just another kind of charge. Electric charge has positive and negative, which at up to zero. Color charge has red, green, and blue which add up to white. Thats where the name comes from, it’s an analogy because white light is made of those three colors and quarks *always always always* combine in a way that makes a “white” color charge.
There are also three anti-color charges, anti-red, anti-green, and anti-blue. So, quarks can either combine in pairs as a color and anti-color, which adds up to neutral “white”, or they come in threes as red, green, and blue which add up to neutral “white”. Quarks absolutely cannot ever ever ever ever ever ever be alone, at all, under any known conditions.
When you try to pull quarks apart, they create a “flux tube” between them that stretches like a rubber band. The more you pull them apart, the more energy gets stored in this “rubber band” flux tube. At the instant when the quarks are far enough apart to separate, the flux tube collapse and the energy stored in it creates two new quarks which bind up with the first two.
As far as anyone knows, quarks are fundamental. They can’t be split into smaller pieces, and they aren’t made of anything. They are packets of energy, waves in a “quark field” just like how photons are packets of energy which are waves in the electromagnetic field, and electrons are packets of energy that are waves in the electron field.
They make up protons and neutrons. Protons are 2 up quarks and 1 down, neutrons are the opposite. Electrons are elementary already and aren’t made up of any smaller parts. Put those 3 together, protons neutrons and electrons, and you have an atom. Different amounts of them are what make the difference elements (P+E) and isotopes (N)
You’ve got some good answers about what they *are* already but I want to address the names.
They’re not actually spinning, and they’re not actually coloured. They’re too small to have visible colours anyways. The red/green/blue thing is just describing a property of quarks that we *call* “colour”, but we could just as easily have called them spicy quarks, salty quarks, and bitter quarks, or bing/bong/pong quarks, or whatever.
Small stuff. Questionably small stuff.
The smaller you go the more of this there is. Nothing else. Just quarks
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