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Strange quark



Strange Quark
Composition: Elementary particle
Family: Fermion
Group: Quark
Generation: Second
Mass: 80 - 130 MeV/c2
Electric charge: -1/3 e
Spin: ½

The strange quark is a second-generation quark with a charge of -(1/3)e and a strangeness of −1. It is the third lightest quark after the up and down quarks, with a mass of somewhere between 80 and 130 MeV. The first strange particle (particle containing a strange valence quark) was discovered in 1947, with the identification of the kaon, but the strange quark itself was not identified until Gell-Mann and Zweig developed the quark model in 1964.

Hadrons containing strange valence quarks

Hadrons containing strange valence quarks include the following:

  • Kaons are mesons containing a strange quark (or its antiparticle) and an up or down quark.
  • The η and η' flavorless mesons are linear combinations of several quark-antiquark pairs, including the strange-antistrange.
  • The φ flavorless meson is pure strange-antistrange.
  • Strange baryons are known as hyperons: the Σ and Λ have one strange quark, the Ξ two, and the Ω three.

See also


 
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Strange_quark". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.
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