• Question: @Helena how did scientists discover quark if you can't even see it with a microscope

    Asked by 759cmte45 to Helena on 14 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Helena Quilter

      Helena Quilter answered on 14 Mar 2016:

      That’s a really great question! I don’t know that much about quarks really.

      There are lots of things that we can’t see with a microscope but we know are there – things like gases in the atmosphere. Sometimes we have to look for how they change other things to be able to know they are there!

      There were scientists who thought that quarks existed so they worked out some experiments to look for them. They had a huge machine that can smash particles into each other and measure what happens. They could then work out the quarks were there without seeing them – they had to look at the other things that were there to prove quarks existed!

      There are six different types of quarks (they call them flavours) – up, down, strange, charm, top, and bottom, strange names!

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