Encyclopedia > Lepton

Article Content

Lepton

A lepton (Greek for "light", as opposed to hadrons which are "heavy") is a subatomic particle that is not made of quarks. The leptons are the electron, the muon, the tau, and their respective neutrinos.

All known leptons have a negative or neutral charge. There are 6 types of lepton, 3 of which are negative, the other 3 neutral.

A Table of the Leptons

Name	Charge	Mass(GeV)
Electron	-1	0.000511
Electron Neutrino	0	~0
Muon	-1	0.1056
Muon Neutrino	0	~0
Tau	-1	1.777
Tau Neutrino	0	~0

External Link

Authoritative information on particle properties is compiled by the Particle Data Group http://pdg.lbl.gov

All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!

Featured Article

Lake Ronkonkoma, New York

... mi²). 12.7 km² (4.9 mi²) of it is land and none of the area is covered with water. Demographics As of the census of 2000, there are 19,701 people ...