A nuclear particle is a unit of matter smaller than an atom. There are two types of subatomic particles: elementary particles and composite particles. Elementary particles are not made up of other particles whereas composite particles are. Nuclear physics is the study of how these particles interact.
In the standard model, the elementary particles include, six favors of quarks, up, down, bottom, top, strange and charm, six types of leptons, electrons, electron neutrino, muon, muon neutrino, tau and tau neutrino, twelve gauge bosons, the photon of electromagnetism, the three W and Z bosons of the weak force, and the eight gluons of the strong force, and the Higgs boson. There are various extensions of the standard model that predicts the existence of other elementary particles.
Composite particles, such as protons or atomic nuclei, are bound states of two or more elementary particles. They include all hadrons, a group composed of baryons and mesons. An example of a composite particle is a proton. A proton is made up of two up quarks and one down quark.
© BrainMass Inc. brainmass.com April 17, 2024, 6:29 am ad1c9bdddf