Quarks are fundamental particles that are not made up of smaller components. They are a type of elementary particle and are the building blocks of hadrons, which include particles like protons and neutrons. There are six different “flavors” of quarks: up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom. Quarks have a property called “spin,” which gives them magnetic properties. Quarks also have a property called “color charge,” which is unrelated to the visual concept of color. The color charge refers to the fact that quarks can interact with each other in ways that are similar to the way that colored objects can mix together. This property is responsible for the strong force, which is one of the four fundamental forces in the universe. Scientists study quarks by smashing particles together in giant particle accelerators, like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland.