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Physics Lesson 21.3.3 - Charm
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Welcome to our Physics lesson on Charm, this is the third lesson of our suite of physics lessons covering the topic of Classification of Elementary Particles. Quarks and Charm, you can find links to the other lessons within this tutorial and access additional physics learning resources below this lesson.
Charm
Nowadays, the theory of strong interactions is known as quantum chromodynamics (chromo = colors). It is considered as the key to understand strong interactions. Prior to tau particles discovery, only four leptons were known. By analyzing the quarks behavior during various decay processes, made scientists think that there exists another quark still undiscovered at that time. They called it charm, C, which means "fascinating". It has the following values for each type of charge: q = 2/3, B = 1/3, S = 0 and C = + 1.
The existence of charm was confirmed experimentally in 1974, when a heavy meson of mass 3100 MeV/c2 was detected. Nowadays, there are 6 types of quarks known. The following table summarizes all properties of each type of quark.
Example 2
The Λ0 elementary particle is composed by a u-quark, a d-quark and s-one. What is its electric charge, baryon number, strangeness and charm?
Solution 2
The composition of this elementary particle is uds. The values required represent the arithmetic sum of each individual quark. Thus, referring to the above table, we obtain the following results.
for electric charge:
= 2/3 + (- 1/3) + (- 1/3)
= 0
For baryon charge, we have:
= 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3
= 1
For strangeness, we have:
= 0 + 0 + (-1)
= -1
Finally, for charm, we have:
= 0 + 0 + 0
= 0
You have reached the end of Physics lesson 21.3.3 Charm. There are 6 lessons in this physics tutorial covering Classification of Elementary Particles. Quarks and Charm, you can access all the lessons from this tutorial below.
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