Hank Green - Strange Charm at VidCon 2011

"A quark is a fundamental constituent of matter..."

My favorite song by Hank. I'm so glad he played it.

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A quark is a fundamental constituent of matter
Observed in 1968 through deep elastic scatter
We found that protons aren't as simple as we thought
We thought they were solid particles but they are not

Protons in fact are made up of three separate pieces
It just gets more confusing as our knowledge increases
But that is what a quark is; it's a piece of a proton
And they also make up other things including the neutron

Oh up, down, strange, charm, top, bottom
If you don't know what a quark is, it don't matter you still got 'em
And with leptons and bosons, unless something's amiss
They make up everything that we can see and that we know exists

Quarks can join together in two different ways,
Baryons and Mesons, but most instantly decay.
If a particle has three quarks, then it's a baryon,
And if there's one quark and and anti-quark, then it is a meson.
These tiny bits of matter are a part of almost everything
And there is no unified theory to make it less confusing.
But the fact that we've identified that they exist at all
Is so remarkable that I am constantly in awe

Oh, up, down, strange charm, top, bottom
If you don't know what a quark is it don't matter you still got 'em
and with leptons and bosons, unless something's amiss,
they make up everything that we can see and that we know exists