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Gell-Mann thought there existed at least three types of quarks.
They have the names up, down, and strange from 1974 thru 1984 the theory predicted three more quarks called charm bottom or beauty and top or truth and each quark has their corresponding anti-quark. -
theory of the quark explains the existence of several particles including the nucleus of the atom.
In fact the proton and neutron each get made up of three quarks and the force which holds the quarks together come from particles called gluons quarks do not exist by themselves but only in pairs (mesons) or triplets (baryons). -
In the 1800's.
An English chemist John Dalton performed experiments with various chemicals that showed that matter indeed seem to consist of elementary lumpy particles atoms although he did not know about their structure he knew that the evidence pointed to something fundamental. -
Physicists at the time.
Thought that light consisted of waves but according to Albert Einstein the quanta behaved like discrete particles physicists call Einstein's discrete light particle a photon. -
For many years.
A heated controversy occurred on deciding whether light consisted of waves or particles the evidence appeared strong for both cases later physicists showed that light appears as either wave-like or particle-like but never both at the same time depending on the experimental setup. -
Other particles got discovered around this time.
Called alpha rays these particles had a positive charge and physicists thought that they consisted of the positive parts of the Thompson atom now known as the nucleus of atoms. -
In 1911.
Ernest Rutherford thought it would prove interesting to bombard atoms with these alpha rays figuring that this experiment could investigate the inside of the atom sort of like a probe he used Radium as the source of the alpha particles and shinned them onto the atoms in gold foil behind the foil sat a fluorescent screen for which he could observe the alpha particles impact. -
In 1912.
A Danish physicist Niels Bohr came up with a theory that said the electrons do not spiral into the nucleus and came up with some rules for what does happen this began a new approach to science because for the first time rules had to fit the observation regardless of how they conflicted with the theories of the time. -
In 1926.
The Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger had an interesting idea why not go all the way with particle waves and try to form a model of the atom on that basis? His theory worked kind of like harmonic theory for a violin string except that the vibrations traveled in circles. -
In the beginning around 460 B.C.
Did a Greek philosopher Democritus develop the idea of atoms he asked a question if you break a piece of matter in half and then break it in half again how many breaks will you have to make before you can break it no further? Democritus thought that it ended at some point a smallest possible bit of matter he called these basic matter particles atoms. -
In 1900.
Max Planck a professor of theoretical physics in Berlin showed that when you vibrate atoms strong enough such as when you heat an object until it glows you can measure the energy only in discrete units he called these energy packets quanta. -
In 1960.
Murray Gell-Mann and Yuval Ne'man independently proposed a method for classifying all the particles then known the method became known as the Eightfold Way what the periodic table did for the elements the Eightfold Way did for the particles in 1964 Gell-Mann went further and proposed the existence of a new level of elementary particles and called them quarks. -
In 1897.
The English physicist J.J Thomson discovered the electron and proposed a model for the structure of the atom Thomson knew that electrons had a negative charge and thought that matter must have a positive charge his model looked like raisins stuck on the surface of a lump of pudding. -
From the time of the ancient Greeks until today.
The visual concept of the atom has proved elusive and obscure yet the mathematical concepts have grown stronger although nothing has yet proven absolute humans can now predict the behavior of atoms with great accuracy but the world of the atom, the quanta of particles, appears so strange that we can no longer visualize what we think and talk about the particles have a quality of complete random existence and non-existence about them.