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I have heard of a particle that scientists have a hard time studing because it takes a lot of energy to separate from each other, yet very little to bring them together, what are these particles called, how, or why, do they work in this way?
Question Date: 2007-08-04
Answer 1:

Quarks are a lot like this. They tend to exist in pairs. This is an area called QCD (quantum chromo-dynamics) in particle physics. It deals with the stuff that protons and neutrons are made of.


Answer 2:

There are a *lot* of particles that act like that. You may be thinking of quarks, which are held together into protons and neutrons by the strong nuclear force, which is the strongest of all of the four forces under most circumstances (gravity inside black holes being the exception). However, basically any particle that is normally part of something else will act like that; quarks are just the stickiest of those that we know about.



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