Particles
6 questions tagged Particles — spanning every one of the seven Ws.
What is an ion?
An ion is an atom or molecule that has gained or lost electrons and therefore carries a charge. Positive ions are cations, and negative ions are anions.
When was the quark model first proposed?
In 1964, Murray Gell-Mann and independently George Zweig proposed quarks as constituents of hadrons. The idea transformed particle physics.
When were neutrinos first proposed?
In 1930, Wolfgang Pauli proposed the neutrino to explain missing energy in beta decay. Enrico Fermi later named and developed the theory further.
What is a boson?
A boson is a particle with integer spin that can share a quantum state with other bosons. Many force-carrying particles are bosons.
What is a fermion?
A fermion is a particle with half-integer spin that follows the Pauli exclusion principle. Electrons, protons, and neutrons are fermions.
Whose discovery first identified the proton as a fundamental particle in the nucleus?
Ernest Rutherford’s. In 1917 and 1919, he showed that hydrogen nuclei are produced from nitrogen under bombardment and recognized the proton.