fundamental particles and elements - nuclear physics and chemistry?

Question

elements are made of proton, electron and nuetron. electron is a fundamental particle. but proton and nuetron are made of three fundaments particles each. (quarks). if we can even divide protons into three different particles, then why does my professor say elements cant be broken any further?

Answer 1

Your professor probably said that the atom is as far as you can subdivide an element and still have it retain the properties of the element.

Answer 2

Elements cannot be broken any further at the level of chemsitry.
Most substances are compounds made out of element atoms that bond together. For chemistry, which deals with bonding, the atom(element) is fundamental.
However the atom is not really fundamental, because it is made up of protons,neutrons and electrons. And protons are made up of quarks, and God knows where this process stops. This however is the realm of physics.
A chemist is rarely concerned with these matters, and for her to say that the element cannot be broken is perfectly legal.

Answer 3

This is because most physics school manual have kept the same approach for the last 50 years or more even though research has advanced a lot.

There are two main reasons for this:
- It is simpler for students to understand the high level explanation even though it doesn't cover everything. Those that will do advanced studies will then need to learn those details.
- Acceptance of a new theoretical model has always been very slow and complex, especially in physics. This is because there are multiple different theoretical models that make sense but very little proofs on the models themselves, especially when it comes to say that one is better than the other.

Answer 4

There is no experimental evidence that quarks and electrons can be split. This doesn't mean that they can't but at the same time we have no clue what particles they may be split into and how these particles behave. So it would be pointless to talk about the physics of these particles.

Answer 5

We can't bust up quarks yet. If you somehow managed to hit one with enough energy to destroy it, you'd probably make a tiny black hole for about 10 -35 second before it evaporated and sprayed you with Hawking radiation.