Made from Smaller Stuff

Hadrons, the Greek for ‘heavy’ are not fundamental particles they are all made from smaller particles, quarks.

The properties of a hadron are due to the combined properties of the quarks that it is made from.

There are two categories of Hadrons: Baryons and Mesons.

Baryons Made from three quarks

The proton is the only stable hadron, all others eventually decay into a proton.

Mesons Made from a quark and an antiquark

Anti Hadrons

Anti hadrons are made from the opposite quarks as their Hadron counterparts, for example a proton is made from the quark combination uud and an antiproton is made from the combination ūūd̄

We can see that a π⁺ and a π^– are particle and antiparticle of each other.