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Baryons and mesons are both hadrons, which are particles composed solely of quarks or both quarks and antiquarks. The term baryon is derived from the Greek "βαρύς" ( barys ), meaning "heavy", because, at the time of their naming, it was believed that baryons were characterized by having greater masses than other particles that were classed ...
e. In particle physics, a baryon is a type of composite subatomic particle, including the proton and the neutron, that contains an odd number of valence quarks, conventionally three. [1] Baryons belong to the hadron family of particles; hadrons are composed of quarks. Baryons are also classified as fermions because they have half-integer spin.
Hadrons are categorized into two broad families: baryons, made of an odd number of quarks (usually three quarks) and mesons, made of an even number of quarks (usually two quarks: one quark and one antiquark). [1] Protons and neutrons (which make the majority of the mass of an atom) are examples of baryons; pions are an example of a meson.
The lightest group of mesons is less massive than the lightest group of baryons, meaning that they are more easily produced in experiments, and thus exhibit certain higher-energy phenomena more readily than do baryons. But mesons can be quite massive: for example, the J/Psi meson (J/ψ
Baryon number. In particle physics, the baryon number is a strictly conserved additive quantum number of a system. It is defined as where is the number of quarks, and is the number of antiquarks. Baryons (three quarks) have a baryon number of +1, mesons (one quark, one antiquark) have a baryon number of 0, and antibaryons (three ...
Eightfold way (physics) The pseudoscalar meson octet. Particles along the same horizontal line share the same strangeness, s, while those on the same left-leaning diagonals share the same charge, q (given as multiples of the elementary charge). In physics, the eightfold way is an organizational scheme for a class of subatomic particles known as ...
Quarks are the fundamental constituents of hadrons and interact via the strong force.Quarks are the only known carriers of fractional charge, but because they combine in groups of three quarks (baryons) or in pairs of one quark and one antiquark (mesons), only integer charge is observed in nature.
The nuclear force acts between hadrons, known as mesons and baryons. This "residual strong force", acting indirectly, transmits gluons that form part of the virtual π and ρ mesons, which, in turn, transmit the force between nucleons that holds the nucleus (beyond hydrogen-1 nucleus) together. [9]