• Question: what are atoms made of ?

    Asked by llamas are amazing to Lewis on 9 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Lewis Wright

      Lewis Wright answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      The Standard Model has all of the elementary particles – that is, particles that cannot be broken into smaller pieces.

      Atoms have a nucleus (the middle bit) of positive protons and neutral neutrons, with negative electrons orbiting around the outside. Electrons are an elementary particle, and so appear in the Standard Model.

      Protons and neutrons are made of quarks – the are six types of quark (Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom) and depending on how you mix them together, they will make particles with different properties.
      Protons and neutrons are both made of three quarks each; protons have two Up and one Down quark, and neutrons have two Down and one Up quark..

      What are quarks made of? We dont know. But we do know from Einsteins E=mc^2 that mass and energy are related, so we could say quite accurately that everything is made of energy!

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