| The simplest hadrons are therefore mesons made from a quark and antiquark pair, and baryons made of three quarks. |
| In general, baryons consist of three quarks and mesons of one quark and its corresponding antiquark. |
| The strong force is mediated by the gluon, which binds quarks together to form baryons and mesons and protons and neutrons together to form nuclei. |
| Gell-Mann distinguished baryons from mesons, the other hadron subclassification, by the number of quarks constituting their make-up. |
| Particle experiments in the fifties and sixties produced copious numbers of mesons and baryons named after letters in the Greek alphabet. |
| The law of the conservation of baryon number states that the total number of baryons must be the same before and after any subatomic event. |
