Briefly explain the elementary particles of nature.

Explanation

Elementary particles :
An atom has a nucleus surrounded by electrons and nuclei is made up of protons and neutrons. Till 1960s, it was thought thta protons, neutrons and electrons are fundamental building block of matter.
In 1964, physicist Murray Gellman and George Zweig theoretically proposed that protons and neutrons are not fundamental particles: in fact they are made up of quarks.Thses quarks are now considered elementary particles of nature. Electrons are fundamental or elementary particles they are not made up of anything.

In the year 1968, the quarks were discovered experiemntally by Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre(SLAC) , USA. There are six quarks namely up, down, charm, strange, top and bottom and their antiparticles.All these uarks have fractional charges .For example, charge of up quark is `+2/3 e` and that of down quark is `-1/3 e`.
According to quark model, proton is made up of two up quarks and one down quark and neutron is made up of one up quark and two down quarks.
The study of elementary particles is called particle physics.