Particle Physics

111 flashcards by MentisLibrary

Quarks, leptons and force carriers, hadrons, conservation laws, the Standard Model and QCD, decays and neutrinos, symmetries, colliders and detectors, and basic nuclear structure, with a key property and a related fact for each term. For undergraduate physics students and curious learners.

What are the six types of quarks?: Up Down Charm Strange Top Bottom
What is the charge of an up quark?: +2/3 e
What is the charge of a down quark?: -1/3 e
What are the six types of leptons?: Electron Muon Tau and their neutrinos
What is the electron mass?: me ≈ 0.511 MeV/c²
What is the muon mass?: mμ ≈ 105.7 MeV/c²
What is the tau mass?: mτ ≈ 1777 MeV/c²
What is the proton composition?: uud (two up one down quark)
What is the neutron composition?: udd (one up two down quark)
What is the proton mass?: mp ≈ 938.3 MeV/c² ≈ 1.673 × 10⁻²⁷ kg
What is the neutron mass?: mn ≈ 939.6 MeV/c²
What is a baryon?: Particle made of three quarks
What is a meson?: Particle made of quark and antiquark
What is a hadron?: Particle made of quarks
What is a fermion?: Particle with half-integer spin
What is a boson?: Particle with integer spin
What is spin?: Intrinsic angular momentum
What is the spin of electron?: s = 1/2
What is the spin of photon?: s = 1
What are the four fundamental forces?: Strong Weak Electromagnetic Gravitational
What is the photon?: Force carrier of electromagnetic force
What is the gluon?: Force carrier of strong force
What is the W boson?: Charged weak force carrier
What is the Z boson?: Neutral weak force carrier
What is the graviton?: Hypothetical force carrier of gravity
What is the Higgs boson?: Particle that gives mass to other particles
What is the Higgs mechanism?: Process by which particles acquire mass
What is antimatter?: Particles with opposite charge of matter
What is a positron?: Antiparticle of electron
What is an antiproton?: Antiparticle of proton