Fundamental Particles

The proton and neutron are not __________ particles because they are made up of smaller particles themselves. When you smash particles together in a particle collider these fundamental particles are separated out and can be detected.

While there are hundreds of 'sub-sub-atomic' particles, they are all made up of just a few fundamental particles:

• electron
• positron (anti-electron)
• quarks
• netrinos
• muons

The proton and neutron are made of three quarks. Quarks come in 'flavours':

'Flavour'	Charge	Mass
'UP'	+ 2/3 e	1/3 u
'DOWN'	- 1/3 e	1/3 u

From this we can workout the which quarks make up a proton and a neutron:

Particle	Charge	Quarks
Proton	__________	__________
Neutron	__________	__________

This also allows us to explain both forms of beta decay:

• β- decay involves a __________ quark changing into an __________ quark (one neutron becomes a proton and an electron)
• β+ decay involves one __________ quark changing into a __________ quark (a proton becomes a neutron and a positron)