Pronunciation: [kwˈɑːk] (IPA) 
The spelling of the word "quark" can be tricky as it doesn't follow traditional English phonetics. It actually comes from the German word "Quark", which refers to a type of soft cheese. In IPA phonetic transcription, the word is pronounced /kwɑrk/. The "qu" sound is pronounced like "kw", while the "ar" sound is pronounced as a short "a" followed by a soft "r" sound. This unique combination of sounds gives "quark" its distinct pronunciation.
A quark refers to a fundamental subatomic particle that is a constituent of matter. It is one of the building blocks of protons and neutrons, which are found in the nucleus of an atom. Quarks are elementary particles that belong to the family of fermions, specifically a type known as elementary fermions. In the standard model of particle physics, there are six types, or flavors, of quarks, namely up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom.
Quarks possess an electric charge, with the up quark having a charge of +2/3 and the down quark having a charge of -1/3. These fractional charges are a defining characteristic of quarks unlike other subatomic particles such as electrons and neutrinos that have whole-number charges. Additionally, quarks also carry other intrinsic properties like color charge, spin, and mass. They are subject to the strong nuclear force, which is responsible for holding the nucleus of atoms together.
Quarks are never observed in isolation due to a phenomenon known as confinement, which implies that they are always bound to other quarks forming composite particles called hadrons. Examples of hadrons include protons and neutrons, each composed of three quarks. Quarks exhibit the property of fractional electric charge, allowing them to combine in various ways, resulting in an extensive variety of particles. The study of quarks and the interactions between them is crucial in understanding the nature of matter and the fundamental forces in the universe.
* The statistics data for these misspellings percentages are collected from over 15,411,110 spell check sessions on www.spellchecker.net from Jan 2010 - Jun 2012.
The word "quark" was coined by the physicist Murray Gell-Mann in 1963. Gell-Mann needed a name for the elementary particles that he theorized to exist within atomic nuclei, and he drew inspiration from a line in James Joyce's novel "Finnegans Wake": "Three quarks for Muster Mark"! Quark is a word that specifically refers to a type of curdled milk used in traditional dairy products. Gell-Mann found the word appealing due to its sound and its connection to the novel's description of three quarks, which resonated with the tripleness of his hypothetical particles.
