Meet all 17 fundamental particles of the Standard Model in an interactive 3D gallery
Everything you have ever touched is built from just 17 fundamental particles. Meet the whole cast, see how wildly their masses differ, and watch the heavy ones decay.
Orbit the gallery and click any particle to inspect it. Quarks glow rose, leptons blue, gauge bosons amber, and the Higgs emerald.
The Standard Model contains exactly 17 fundamental particles: 6 quarks, 6 leptons, 4 gauge bosons, and the Higgs boson. These are the building blocks of everything in the universe. Every atom, every star, every living thing is made from combinations of these particles interacting through the fundamental forces.
Click any particle to learn about its properties. Quarks (rose) carry color charge and feel the strong force. Leptons (blue) do not. Gauge bosons (amber) carry the forces. The Higgs (emerald) gives mass to other particles.
Pick a particle, or step through with Prev and Next, to read its ID card: mass, charge, spin, and flavor quantum numbers.
Each particle has a unique set of quantum numbers: mass, electric charge, spin, and various flavor quantum numbers. Select a particle to see its complete ID card.
Drag to pan and scroll to zoom along the mass scale. Notice how far the top quark sits from the electron, and the neutrinos from both.
Particle masses span an astonishing range. The top quark is 340,000 times heavier than the electron, and neutrinos are lighter still. This enormous hierarchy is one of the great unsolved puzzles of particle physics.
Choose a decay and watch heavy parents cascade down to stable daughters. Use Restart and the speed slider to replay it.
Heavy particles are unstable — they decay into lighter ones. The top quark decays in about 10⁻²⁵ seconds, while the proton (if it decays at all) has a lifetime greater than 10³⁴ years. Watch how decay chains cascade from heavy parents to stable daughters.
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