The Standard Model of Particle Physics

Lately, I have been wanting to blog about antimatter. However, before I jump right into the middle of things, let's start from the beginning, shall we? For those of you that have already had the pleasure and/or pain of experiencing my particle rants, bear with me. :) For those of you who have yet to experience my enthusiasm, let's go!!! :)

The majority of us know what matter is, after all, it makes up everything around us. We are even physically made up of it. Protons, neutrons, electrons ... we know of these "particles" that we are made of... we've heard of the periodic table in Chemistry. Looking a bit closer (well not literally right?! I mean can we actually see an electron? Or better yet, has anyone ever observed an electron... go on... think about it?!), we have found that some particles, such as the proton and neutron are in fact made up of smaller particles. Trying to understand how many particles there are, how to classify them, or which are the fundamental particles (i.e. which are the smallest building blocks of matter) can get chaotic very quickly. So let's take a look at the classic image below.



As you can see from the picture, there are three generations of matter. Basically what that means is that the first column existed first, then column 2 came into existence and lastly column three.

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Starting with the Leptons, we see that there are three generations and along with each generation, a neutrino. Leptons are easy to understand. We know of the first generation of Leptons, right? Electrons?! So let's add a little side kick to our electron friend and name it the electron neutrino. Next we have the Muon and its side kick, the Muon neutrino, it's a lepton just as the electron only it is greater in mass and/or energy. Lastly, we have the Tau and its side kick, the Tau neutrino, it's a lepton just as the electron and muon only it is greater in mass and/or energy than both the first and second generations. That wasn't so bad, right?! :)

Moving on to the quarks, we can easily see how fun these guys are. I mean, just read their names... up, down, charm, strange, top and bottom. Originally top and bottom were named truth and beauty, but those names didn't stick. We call these the six quark flavors. (Doesn't flavors make you feel like you're in an ice cream parlor... trying to decide on which one you really want on your cone. Luckily with quark flavors, there are only six! You know what that means? If you were in a quark parlor, you could easily have all six... well not quite. You'll understand why soon enough!)
Quarks evolved in three generations along with the leptons. As it turns out, quarks are the particles that make up the particles we are more familiar with, such as the proton and neutron.

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Now before I get to the Gauge Bosons.... I need to explain a couple of important things.

1) Antiparticles : An antiparticle is the same as a particle except it has opposite charge.
For example: The antiparticle of the electron is the positron. It has the same mass and spin, but has a positive charge instead of negative charge. (There are some particles, that are in fact their own antiparticle. This comes about typically for particles with zero charge. For example, the photon. This we will see when we discuss Bosons.)

2) The are three classifications of particles, excluding Bosons. These three categories are the Leptons, Mesons and Hadrons. The easiest way to think of these categories is as follows:

Leptons: Little particles - Electrons, Muons and Taus (and of course their side kicks.)

Mesons: Medium particles - these are quark-antiquark pairs. - Ex: up quark anti-up quark, etc.

Hadrons: Heavy particles - these are particles that are made up of 3 quarks. - Ex: the Proton, which is made up of two up quarks and one down quark.

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Now for the Gauge Bosons:

There are technically six gauge bosons and Bosons are the force carriers.

Photon: Electromagnetic force carrier.

Gluon: The strong force carrier.

Z: A weak force carrier.

W+ and W-: Weak force carriers.

Higgs: According to wikipedia, "the Standard Model's explanation of why some fundamental particles have mass when 'naive' theory says they should be massless, and - linked to this - why the weak force has a much shorter range than the electromagnetic force."

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One thing that I will add, which perhaps you're wondering or will eventually be wondering, is how are the quarks bound together?! The simplest answer is via the gluons. In reality, it's more complicated than my simple answer. However, think of it like this, the gluons are the glue that hold the quarks together. :)

So there you have it, The Standard Model of Particle Physics.


Below, I have included a link of a website sponsored by the Particle Data Group and NSF. This site offers information regarding particles, accelerators, mysteries in physics and then some. It's an awesome site, do take a peek.

The Particle Adventure