Fundamental Particles- the basics

An atom is made of a proton, neutron, and electron. Protons and neutrons are in the nucleus, and the electrons orbit around. 

Protons are made of 3 different particles; (2) up quarks, (1) down quark, and are held together by gluons. 

Neutrons are just the opposite, they have (1) up quark, and (2) down quarks. Commonly, they are held together by gluons. 

Electrons THEY are not made up of anything??  How is this possible? They are not made of anything, they are understood as “fundamental particles”: These fundamental particles are grouped into: quarks, leptons, and bosons.

Quarks include: While Up quarks and down quarks are the most common, there are also top quark, charm quark, strange quark, and bottom quarks. They have fractional charges. 

Leptons include: tau neutrino, muon neutrino, electron neutrino, electron, muon, and tau. They have either -1 or 0 charge. Electrons are the most leptons. 

Bosons are personally my favorite. This is where things get wild as bosons lead to many more questions on our existence. We know bosons include gluons, w bosons, z bosons, photons, and it is theorized that gravitons are in this family as well. The Higgs boson is what gives mass to all other 16 fundamental particles. Without it, everything as we know would be massless. Bosons are responsible for the four fundamental forces: electromagnetic, strong, week, and gravity.  

With that being said, all of the matter that we are aware of in today's time, makes up 5% of the universe. If you are wondering about the other 95%, well that’s where dark matter comes to play. Our perspective is once again shifted as most of what we know is only a small fraction of what is really out there. 

Food for thought: as everything has the opposite, with an up quark there’s a down quark, with positive there’s negative, I wonder if the Higgs boson has an opposite counterpart. If this gives matter to all 16 of our fundamental particles, is there something that can take away matter of particles? Perhaps we may never find out, or perhaps we will. Only theorized time will tell.