Introduction: Particles

Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of matter and radiation. I've tried my best to compile the study so far and provide a layman explanation to how it works.

First things we need to understand are flavors and particles. Particles are the building blocks of matter and radiation. These particles can also be used to explain interactions/behaviors of and between other particles. Flavor is a scientific term used to differentiate various particles in group.

When discussing particles such electrons, and gluons we must understand that each elementary particle has its own field containing fluctuations. Particles are nothing but excitations in this field; areas where the field is concentrated. ex. areas in the up quark field that are most concentrated are up quarks. This idea is known as Quantum Field Theory (QFT). When referring to excitations in a field, it's important to note these excitations have discrete energy levels or quanta. 

First we have fermions and bosons. Two identical fermion particles cannot have the same quantum state* while bosons are capable of doing this (Einstein-Bose Condensate). Fermions also have a half integer spin while bosons have integer spin numbers.

^Orange and Green particles are fermions,  blue and purple particles are bosons.

Bosons tend to be force carriers. They include vector bosons/gauge bosons (w/direction) and scalar (direction doesn't matter) bosons. The Higgs Boson is a good example of a scalar boson while the particles in blue are vector bosons.

Quarks and leptons are both types of fermions but are very different. Quarks unlike leptons interact with the strong force. This means that they emit and absorb gluons a type of gauge boson (force carriers) which in a sense glues quarks together. This way up and down quarks can make up protons and neutrons while electrons are incapable of doing so, and thus are not part of the nucleus of an atom.

 A hadron is is essentially a group of particles that stay together because of gluons.

 

Pictures show two types of hadrons consisting of fermions. The field that describes the motion of gluons in space between quarks is known as the gluon field, which we will discuss later.

Baryons are classified as fermions and are a subset of hadrons that contain particles in groups of an odd number of valence quarks and tend to be more stable. Mesons are classified as bosons and are another subset of hadrons which tend to decay quickly and consist of an equal number of quarks and antiquarks.

  * a system that is defined by quantum numbers which defines a particle itself,