Question: Hi ok if protons and neutrons are made of quarks, what are electrons made of and what exactly are quarks and what are they made of oh and I heard something about six main types of quark plz explain I love the baffling part about science and wanting to know more!!!!!!??!! :-) sorry I keep asking questions it's just I really like finding stuff out :-)

Anna Scaife answered on 14 Nov 2014:

Hey Khrystillianna – you obviously already know that we can break down atoms into protons, electrons and neutrons!

Protons and neutrons are a particular type of particle, called a hadron. All hadrons are made up of quarks. Hadrons are not fundamental particles, because you can break them down even further (like atoms) into their constituent quarks. Quarks are fundamental, but they never exist in isolation, i.e. you can’t get a single quark, they always combine into twos or threes. But there are different types of quark – the six flavours that you mentioned.

Electrons are not hadrons, they are “leptons”. Leptons *are* fundamental particles and you can’t break them down any further. Remember – an electron is much smaller than a proton or a neutron. Leptons are happy to exist on their own.

So – quarks and leptons are the fundamental particles. We separate them up because they react differently to different types of forces. Fundamental means that you can’t break these particles down any further, so you can’t really describe them as being “made” of anything 🙂