Word of the Day

: March 11, 2025

quark

noun KWORK

What It Means

Quark is a word used in physics to refer to any one of several types of very small particles that make up matter.

// Quarks, which combine together to form protons and neutrons, come in six types, or flavors: up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom.

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quark in Context

“One quantum field is special because its default value can change. Called the Higgs field, it controls the mass of many fundamental particles, like electrons and quarks. Unlike every other quantum field physicists have discovered, the Higgs field has a default value above zero. Dialing the Higgs field value up or down would increase or decrease the mass of electrons and other particles. If the setting of the Higgs field were zero, those particles would be massless.” — Matt Von Hippel, Wired, 19 Aug. 2024

Did You Know?

If you were a physics major, chances are that James Joyce didn’t make it onto your syllabus. While literature majors are likely more familiar with his work, Joyce has a surprising tie to physics. In the early 1960s, American physicist Murray Gell-Man came up with the word quork, which he used to refer to his concept of an elementary particle smaller than a proton or neutron (by his own account he was in the habit of using names like “squeak” and “squork” for peculiar objects). He later settled on the spelling quark after reading a line from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: “Three quarks for Muster Mark! / Sure he has not got much of a bark / And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.” The name stuck and has been used by physicists ever since.