2. A very small amount of something: "There wasn't a particle of truth in anything the politician said."
3. A minute body that is considered to have finite mass but negligible size.
4. Any one of the basic units of matter; such as, a molecule, an atom, or an electron.
5. A unit of matter smaller than the atom or its main components.
6. Etymology: from Latin particula "small part".
They consist of two neutrons and two protons and so they are identical to the nucleus of a helium atom and are one of the products of the spontaneous disintegration of radioactive elements; such as, radium and thorium.
The process of emission, alpha decay, transforms one element into another, decreasing the atomic (or proton) number by two and the atomic mass (or nucleon number) by four.
It is a product of disintegration of various isotopes of both natural and artificial radioactive elements.
2. A small electrically charged particle thrown off by many radio-active materials.
It is identical to the electron and possesses the smallest negative electric charge found in nature.
Beta particles emerge from radioactive material at high speeds, sometimes close to the speed of light.
3. An electron emitted at high velocity from a radioactive atom that is undergoing spontaneous disintegration.Beta particles do not exist in the nucleus but are created during disintegration, or beta decay, when a neutron converts to a proton to emit an electron.
2. Any baryon resonance having zero hypercharge and total isotopic spin.
2. An entity; such as, an exciton or phonon, that interacts with elementary particles, but does not exist as a free particle.
Eleven additional particles with this quark structure have been identified so far.
2. One of a family of elementary particles having about ten times the mass of the proton and consisting of an atom-like combination of a bottom quark with its anti-quark.A hyperon is a comparatively massive baryon that may be unstable or partially stable and is short-lived.
A baryon is a subatomic particle belonging to a group that undergoes strong interactions, has a mass greater than or equal to that of the proton (a stable, positively charged elementary particle), and consists of three quarks.
It also refers to pieces even smaller; such as, electrons, protons, and neutrons. Another application is to larger ones, as in interstellar dust.