Definition of quark

The term "quark" was coined by British physicist Murray Gell-Mann in the late 1960s as part of his proposal to explain the structure of subatomic particles known as hadrons. In particular, Gell-Mann proposed that hadrons were made up of smaller particles called quarks, and that there were only a few different types, or flavors, of quarks. The name "quark" comes from a line in James Joyce's novel "Finnegans Wake," where it is used to describe something that is inherently unknowable and mysterious. Gell-Mann has explained that he chose the word quark because he wanted to select a name that was entirely new and would not be mispronounced by scientists from non-English speaking countries. Additionally, he wanted a name that would not suggest any particular properties of the particles, in line with his belief that the properties of the quarks were still largely unknown at the time. After Gell-Mann's proposal was accepted by the scientific community, the existence of quarks was confirmed through a series of experiments in the 1960s and 1970s, including the observation of the J/psi particle, which provided strong evidence for the existence of bound quark-antiquark pairs. Since then, quarks have become a central concept in particle physics, and their behavior continues to be studied and examined in order to better understand the basic building blocks of the universe.