"What is the world made of?"
"What holds it together?"

 

 

 

 

Why do so many things in this world share the same characteristics? Matter of the world is made from a few fundamental building blocks of nature. The word "fundamental" is key here. Fundamental building blocks are objects that are
simple and structureless -- not made of anything smaller.

 


Is the Atom Fundamental?

Atoms could be categorize into groups that shared similiar chemical properties Atoms were made up of simpler building blocks, and that it was these simpler building blocks in different combinations that determined which atoms had which chemical properties. Atoms had structure and were not just squishy balls. Atoms have a tiny but dense, positive nucleus and a cloud of negative electrons (e-).

 

Is the Nucleus Fundamental?

Is the nucleus fundamental? Later, it was discovered that it was made of protons (p+), which are positively charged, and neutrons (n), which have no charge.

So, then, are protons and neutrons fundamental?
Protons and neutrons are composed of even smaller particles called quarks which are
likepoints in geometry. They're not made up of anything else. Perhaps quarks
and the electron and a few other things are fundamental.

Scale of the atom.

While an atom is tiny, the nucleus is ten thousand times smaller than the atom and the quarks and electrons are at least ten thousand times smaller than that. We don't know exactly how small quarks and electrons are; they are definitely smaller than 10-18 meters, and they might literally be points.

It is also possible that quarks and electrons are not fundamental after all, and will turn out to be made up of other, more fundamental particles.


Will this madness ever end?

Physicists constantly look for new particles. When they find them, they categorize them and try to find patterns that tell us about how the fundamental building blocks of the universe interact.Ther are now about two hundred particles all of which aren't fundamenta. They are named with letters from the Greek and Roman alphabets.

 

 

Everything from galaxies to mountains to molecules is made from quarks and leptons. Quarks behave differently than leptons, and for each kind of matter particle there is a corresponding antimatter particle.

For every type of matter particle we've found, there also exists a corresponding antimatter particle, or antiparticle. Antiparticles look and behave just like their corresponding matter particles, except they have opposite charges.

Gravity affects matter and antimatter the same way because gravity is not a charged property and a matter particle has the same mass as its antiparticle. When a matter particle and antimatter particle meet, they annihilate into pure energy!

The Four Interactions

 

 

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