What are the basic particles of matter?

Answer 1

Atoms - which is what most people think of as the basic piece of matter - are actually made up of even lesser sub-atomic particles.

At present these are grouped as Fermions and Bosons which are further differentiated into different subatomic particles:

• quarks - fermions (6 "flavors": up, down, top, bottom, charmed, & strange)
• leptons - fermions (6 types: electron, muon, tau, electron neutrino, muon neutrion, & tau neutrino)
• gauge bosons - bosons (12 total with 4 general types: gluon - 8 "colors", photon, W boson - {2 types - & +} , Z boson) NOTE: a 13th gauge boson, the Graviton, has been speculated but not confirmed.

• Higgs boson - bosons (only recently confirmed - at least we think it has been)

Atoms are made up of electrons (a type of lepton), protons (composed of 2 up quarks and 1 down quark) and neutrons (composed of 2 down quarks and 1 up quark).

Answer 2

The smallest particle of an element is an atom. However the atom can be broken down into Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons.

Current science cannot break down the electron any further, but the protons and neutrons are made of quarks, and leptons, and held together by bosons. Electrons are actually one of the types of leptons.

the 6 types of quark are; up, down, top, bottom, charm and strange

the 6 types of lepton are; electron, electron neutrino, muon, muon neutrino, tau, and tau neutrino.

the confirmed bosons are; Photon, W boson, Z boson, and gluon. there are also 2 unconfirmed bosons that have good evidence of their existence. These are, higgs boson, and graviton.

Answer 3

Answer 1) An atom Answer 2) A spherical Standing Wave. The wave-particle duality which is at the heart of all matter and energy is a contradictory concept which is better understood when we view matter's particle effect as being caused by a spherical standing wave. The wave center gives the particle effect and the in and out waves or two waves travelling in opposite directions gives the wave effect.

Answer 4

In general, atom make up matter. However, atoms themselves are made up of protons and neutrons and they are made up of quarks. Protons are made up of up and down quarks, but there are 6 types of quarks in total: up, down, charm, strange, top and bottom, and all are categorised into three generations. All searches for a 4th generation have failed. However, all quarks but up and down have very short mean lifetime (they decay very quickly). Up, charm and top quarks have a charge of +2/3. Down, strange and bottom quarks have a charge of -1/3. Because of colour confinement quarks make up hadrons (composite particles). Protons are made up of two up quarks and one down quark. Their resultant charges add up together to give the overall charge of a proton of +1. Neutrons are made up of two down quarks and one up quarks and this combination leaves it with no charge. Hadrons can be generally divided into baryons and mesons. Baryons are made up of three quarks, while mesons are made up of one quark and one antiquark. Also, baryons are fermions and mesons are bosons. That means that the Pauli Exclusion Principle does not apply to mesons, therefore a number of them may occupy the same quantum state. That means that fermions do occupy space as opposed to bosons. Many subtypes of baryons and mesons exist, and all are organised into groups generally referred to as families.

The answer to your question is that quarks make up most of matter, however leptons (e.g. electrons, muons and neutrinos) also do make up matter and some mesons and gauge bosons also participate.

Answer 5

The atom is the smallest piece of matter.

Answer 6

They are quarks and leptons.