Quarks have many properties including: mass, electric charge, and color. Their mass tells you something about how much matter they are made of or how heavy they would be if you could weigh them. They can have a positive (+) or negative (−) electric charge. Up, charm, and top quarks have a positive 2/3 charge. Down, strange, and bottom quarks have a negative 1/3 charge. So protons are positive because there are two ups and one down quark, giving a net positive charge: ((+2/3) + (+2/3) + (-1/3) = +3/3 or +1) . Quarks also have a property called color that refers to the strong force that attracts quarks together—and while there is no actual color at this small a scale—quarks can be blue, green, or red, and there is one quark of each color inside a proton or neutron.

Play Matter Mechanic and Baryon Blaster to see how the different types and quarks and the three colors combine to form particles.

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