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Re: What are "elementary particles?"



We are in a sorry state if some texts lead people to believe the proton
is a lepton! May be you need to change texts. Even Conceptual Physics
has it correct briefly, while Halliday and Resnick ('88) devote ~ 16
pp. Discussing conservation laws, the multiplicity of particles and
their associated forces (gluons, photons --), eight fold way
organization and colour neutral rule (QCD), spin, the charge,
strangeness, and baryon number quantum numbers, etc.

bc who tripled his '88 superficial knowledge skimming the H & R 16 pp.


Herbert H Gottlieb wrote:

Discussions of "elementary particles" in all of the
high school and college physics texts seem to be
relegated to the last few pages of the books.
Furthermore, unlike other portions of these textbooks
the treatment of the elementary particles is poorly
organized and is more confusing that enlightening.

The textbook authors seem to disagree on whether
the leptons (protons, electrons, etc.) consist
of quarks like the mesons and hadrons ... or if the
leptons are elementary particles without any internal
quark structure.

At the present time, do physicists think that ALL
of matter including leptons, are composed of quartks?

Herb