• Question: what are neutrons protons and electrons made of?

    Asked by anon-220323 on 19 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Marianne King

      Marianne King answered on 19 Jun 2019: last edited 19 Jun 2019 11:54 am

      They’re made of subatomic particles called quarks. A proton is made of two ‘up’ quarks and a ‘down’ quark. Neutrons are made of two ‘down’ quarks and one ‘up’ quark. These up and down quarks have different electrical charges that add up to +1 in the proton and 0 in the neutron. I don’t think electrons are made up of anything smaller.

    • Photo: Matthew Bareford

      Matthew Bareford answered on 19 Jun 2019:

      Marianne is right, quarks make up protons and neutrons. Electrons are a fundamental particle (not made up of anything else) it is called a lepton. Positrons are also leptons

    • Photo: Kaitlin Wade

      Kaitlin Wade answered on 19 Jun 2019:

      Yep – both Marianne and Matthew have answered really well so not sure what I can contribute apart from the fact that quarks are really quite small!

    • Photo: Nina Rzechorzek

      Nina Rzechorzek answered on 19 Jun 2019:

      Great question – I love this YouTube video which made everything much clearer for me!

    • Photo: Kate Timms

      Kate Timms answered on 20 Jun 2019: last edited 20 Jun 2019 11:08 am

      Yep, they’re made of quarks. Which is a pretty silly name for such a fundamental particle!

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