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Chemistry and Physics - How Did The Quark Get Its Name?

How did the quark get its name?

This theoretical particle, considered to be the fundamental unit of matter, was named by Murray Gell-Mann (1929-), an American theoretical physicist (a scientist specializing in the interaction between matter and energy) and Nobel Prize winner. Its name originated as a playful word, sounding something like "kwork." Gell-Mann later came across the line "Three quarks for Master Marks" in James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, and the particle became known as a quark.

There are six kinds or "flavors" of quark: up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top. Each "flavor" has three varieties or "colors": red, blue, and green. All eighteen types have different electric charges. Three quarks form a proton (having one unit of positive electric charge) or a neutron (zero charge). Like all known particles, a quark has its antimatter opposite, known as an antiquark (a type of antiparticle). A quark...

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