A Short History of Nearly Everything

by Bill Bryson

Eventually out of all this emerged what is called the Standard Model17, which is essentially a sort of parts kit for the subatomic world. The Standard Model consists of six quarks, six leptons, five known bosons and a postulated sixth, the Higgs boson (named for a Scottish scientist, Peter Higgs), plus three of the four physical forces: the strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism. The arrangement essentially is that among the basic building blocks of matter are quarks; these are held together by particles called gluons; and together quarks and gluons form protons and neutrons, the stuff of the atom’s nucleus. Leptons are the source of electrons and neutrinos. Quarks and leptons together are called fermions. Bosons (named for the Indian physicist S. N. Bose) are particles that produce and carry forces18, and include photons and gluons. The Higgs boson may or may not actually exist; it was invented simply as a way of endowing particles with mass.

Building blocks of subatomic pafticles - Quark, Gluons, Leptons and Bosons