The Stuff the World is Made Of

I'm going to take a break from the mind-boggling and exciting paradoxes and explain what the universe is actually made of.

We've all heard about the molecule, and the atom, and the electrons, protons, and neutrons. Are those the building blocks of the universe? And what about these darned "photons"? Are they a brick also? Ever heard of a "graviton" or a "quark"? How do they all fit together?

Well, it all fits together seamlessly, like a cosmic orchestra. And here, you might see the slightest glimmer of the hottest thing in physics right now -- The String Theory.

What happens when you cut a block of salt in half? You get something a smaller block of salt. Cut that in half again...and it's an even smaller piece. You can do that again and again until you find a single molecule of salt...if you cut that down any more, it ceases to become salt. If you cut a molecule in half, you get two different atoms - Sodium and Chloride. Those nightmares from Chemistry coming back to you?

Pretty much, everything is made up of atoms. For quite a while, scientists thought that atoms were the smallest thing you could have. You can't cut an atom in half, because...well, there's nothing smaller to make it out of, the same way that you can't cut a pixel on your monitor in half.
But eventually, as scientists looked deeper, they found out that Atoms were made out of even smaller things put together. Basically, you have a bunch of electrons orbiting a dense nucleus, which is in turn made out of protons and neutrons.

Protons, Neutrons, and electrons. Are they the smallest building blocks of everything? Is everything in the world made out of a combination of them?

That was truth, until scientists found out that protons and neutrons were actually made up of brothers and sisters of the electrons - quarks (or, up quarks and down quarks). Electrons and the Two Quarks were now elementary particles. As of right now, science holds electrons and the two quarks to be a smallest, indivisible form of matter. The quarks are bigger than the electron, but basically they were like siblings in the cosmic family tree.

There you have it. The most common elementary particles are Electrons and Quarks. You could make pretty much anything in the world with them. Now let's run down the family -

Electron - Has an electrical charge of -1. Has a mass of 0.00054 u.
Up Quark - Has an electrical charge of +2/3. Has a mass of 0.0047 u.
Down Quark - Has an electrical charge of -1/3. Has a mass of 0.0074 u.

So...now that we have our puzzle pieces, let's construct an atom :)

Let's build an atom of Gold with our building blocks. We know that stable gold has 79 electrons, 79 protons, and 118 neutrons.
First, electrons -- there are 79 of them. Easy enough. But what about our 79 protons?
Scientists discovered that protons, with +1 charge, are made out of two up-quarks and one down-quark. And it makes sense, right? The electrical charge of two up-quarks (4/3) added to the negative charge of one down-quark (-1/3) comes out at 3/3, or an even 1. So we add 79 protons, each with two up-quarks and one down-quark.
So then what are neutrons, with 0 charge? They are simply one up-quark and two down-quarks. The charge of one up-quark (+2/3) added to the negative charge of two down-quarks (-2/3) adds up to 0. We add 118 neutrons, each with one up-quark and two down-quarks.

That's a brief exercise with adding up elementary particles.

Scientists have actually discovered a total of 12 elementary particles, arranged into three generations of four each. The generation we just discussed consists of the electron, the quarks, and a "neutrino", which isn't all that important.

If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments. I'd be happy to simplify or elaborate.

a quick summary - Most of the matter in the universe is made out of electrons and the two quarks. Protons are two up-quarks and one down-quark, and neutrons are one up-quark and two down-quarks.

I know this post seems like a boring chemistry lesson, I'm sorry...but I just wanted to get this established long before we go into the String Theory, which is where the real fun begins.

I'll be talking on the Force Carriers (protons, gravitons, etc.) later. They're a completely different breed.