Can someone explain to me all of the classes of neutrino, if that's what these things are? I'm really curious about them, I saw a poster on them once but I don't remember what it really said... I think they are the two different classes of neutrinos, with taus and others somewhere in between. Thanks.
There are two families of fundamental particles: leptons and quarks. There are six leptons. The electron, the muon, and the tau are three. The muon is like a heavy electron, and the tau is heavier still. Each of these particles has its own flavor of neutrino, bringing the total to six. There are six quarks. Up and down correspond to the electron and its neutrino. Charm and strange correspond to the muon and its neutrino. Top and bottom correspond to the tau and its neutrino. The total so far is twelve; six leptons, and six quarks. Each particle also has an antimatter counterpart, which doubles the number of fundamental particles. The total so far is 24 particles. Each of the quarks also come in one of three "colours," red, green, and blue, in analogy with the primary colors. Only colourless particles, however, are allowed to exist independently. A colourless particle can be a triplet of a red, a green, and a blue quark (such as the proton), or a doublet of one colour and its antiparticle (like any of the family of pions). That brings the total to 48 fundamental particles. The number of observable particles, however, is far larger. There are many varieties of quark triplets, and many varieties of quark doublets. There are also excited versions of many of those particles, known as resonances: in analogy with the electrons in an atom, particles made of quarks can exist in a number of different energy states. Each of these energy states, while being composed of the same fundamental particles, behaves like a "different" particle than the others, because more energy is equivalent to more mass. The excited particles (resonances) are heavier than the ground-state particles of the same composition. That's the basic particle zoo. Let me know if you have any specific questions. - Warren
There are (6) leptons: electron - electron neutrino, muon - muon neutrino, tau - tau neutrino. There are (6) quarks: d down, u up, s strange, c charm, b bottom, t top. There are (4) vector bosons: gluon, photon, W and Z bosons.
