Yes, the smallest structure of matter is quarks. The magician has a box in his hand. When it is opened, there is a small box inside. After taking out the box and opening it, there is a smaller box inside. In this way, a box was opened and there was another box inside. Until the smallest box is taken out, a pigeon flies out of it. The audience was surprised to see this. Because this is magic, the mystery of it is naturally only known by magicians.

Physicists are also "magic masters", and they are also solving the secrets of material structure. Before the 20th century, the scientific conclusion was that the smallest unit of matter was the atom.

However, a series of discoveries in the 20th century show that atoms are not the smallest unit, but can also be divided into nuclei and electrons. The mass of almost all atoms is concentrated on the nucleus, and electrons surround the nucleus.

After studying the nucleus, it is found that the nucleus is composed of protons and neutrons. Therefore, atoms are composed of protons, neutrons and electrons, and physicists call these particles elementary particles. So, are these elementary particles in the "box" of atoms?

Physicists have studied the structure of matter more deeply and found hundreds of elementary particles. According to the latest report, it is said that more than 700 kinds of elementary particles have been discovered. There seems to be another box in the box. Therefore, some physicists believe that matter can be divided indefinitely.

However, most elementary particles are unstable and have a short life, so they can be easily transformed into other elementary particles. If these elementary particles are classified, they can be divided into leptons and hadrons. There are electrons and neutrinos in the photon class, and the number is relatively small. Most elementary particles belong to hadrons, including protons and neutrons. Do protons and neutrons have smaller structures?

If you can pick up the hadron and shake it, you can hear noise inside, which shows that the hadron can still be split. The first scientist to propose that hadrons have a structure is American scientist gherman. He believes that hadrons are made up of "quarks", that is, three kinds of quarks. As soon as this theory came out, many physicists became interested in the quark model.

Gherman's quark model is accepted by many physicists because of its rigorous theoretical analysis. But where are quarks? Physicists have been looking for this for 20 years, but they haven't found it. Just when people lost confidence, Chinese-American scientist Ding Zhaozhong discovered the J particle in 1976. Is it the fourth quark? This discovery aroused a wave of searching for quarks.

Physicists are really interested in "quark" because they find that the number "quark" and "3" are predestined friends. After quarks, they are divided into three groups. People call this group "generation", that is, there are three generations of "quarks". But physicists believe that the third generation of "quarks" is missing a quark, which is the top quark discovered later. This is number 66.

Therefore, some people think that matter is composed of such structures as atom-nucleus-hadron-quark.

The question now is, is the smallest structure of matter a quark? Today, no physicist can answer this question because quarks have not been deeply studied. If we pursue quarks as hard as nuclei and protons, we believe that quarks will still contain boxes.

What's after quarks? 2 1 century physicists will give the answer.