Quark Puzzle

thingiverse

The Quark Puzzle provides a 3D visualisation of quarks of the Standard Model of particle physics and the conditions under which quarks form hadrons, given by quantum chromodynamics. Quark flavour, quark generations, the electric charges, colour charges, colour neutrality of hadrons, two- and three-quark states are illustrated impressively. Furthermore, top quarks are designed such that they cannot be formed into hadrons. Students, learners and interested people discover symmetries of particle physics inductively and experimentally by skilfully assembling puzzle pieces. Thus, this model offers a vital addition to outreach and explanations of particle physics without any mathematics and specific vocabulary background. As a representation of the SU(3) symmetry, the predisposed symmetry of a platonic solid, the (spherical) dodecahedron is used to build all hadrons from the same basic shape. The 3D printable puzzle consists of 36 unique pieces in total with different plug-in mechanisms. Originally developed for a LHCb Masterclass, all shapes are freely available under an open source licence.