particle
There are two groups of elementary particles, quarks and leptons. The quarks are up and down, charm and strange, top and bottom (beauty). The leptons are the electron and electron neutrino, muon and muon neutrino, tau and tau neutrino. The quarks and leptons, which are all particles of matter, are referred to collectively as fermions. There are four fundamental forces, or interactions, between particles, which are carried by special particles called bosons. Electromagnetism is carried by the photon, the weak force by the charged W and neutral Z bosons, the strong force by the gluon; gravity is probably carried by the graviton, which has not yet been discovered. Hadrons are particles that feel the strong force. They include mesons, which are composite particles made up of a quark–antiquark pair and baryons, which are particles containing three quarks. Pions and kaons are types of meson. Neutrons and protons (the constituents of ordinary matter) are baryons; neutrons contain one up and two down quarks; protons two up and one down quark.