Lepton

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A lepton is one type of the fundamental building blocks of matter.

As far as early 21st Century scientists know, leptons, together with quarks, are truly fundamental and cannot be broken down further. Basically leptons are electrons, muons and tau particles, along with their complementary antiparticles and neutrinos. Leptons are much lighter than baryons (protons, neutrons and associated antiparticles). Leptons are Fermions and have a quantum spin of a half, and each has neutrinos associated with it. Leptons appear point-like without internal structure.

[edit] Flavour

They've got exciting flavours, though we can't actually taste them. They'd probably be tasty though. Scientists know different leptons have different properties and for want of a better word they call them flavours [1] [2] [3]

Generation negatively charged lepton positively charged lepton neutrino antineutrino
1 electron, e-, β- positron, e+, β+ electron neutrino positron neutrino
2 muon, μ- antimuon, μ+ muon neutrino antimuon neutrino
3 tau, τ- antitau, τ+ tau neutrino antitau neutrino

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. The Particle Adventure
  2. Quarks and Leptons
  3. What is a Lepton?
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