Physics › Section W · Particle physics and frontiers › Topic W.3
Quarks and grand unified theories
Hundreds of particles turned out to be built from just six kinds of quark, held together by a force so strong that no quark has ever been pulled free. The theory that describes them, the Standard Model, is one of the most precisely tested in science, and grand unified theories try to go one step further.
In this topic
- Order in the particle zoo
- Six flavours of quark
- Building hadrons
- Worked example: reading quark content
- Colour and confinement
- The evidence for quarks
- Worked example: beta decay inside the neutron
- The Standard Model
- Grand unified theories
- Worked example: hunting for proton decay
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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