Along with leptons, quarks form the very building blocks of matter—each one an elementary particle with an electric charge. They have no apparent structure, and seem to be a single unit, unable to be broken down further. Held together by the strong nuclear force, they combine to form hadrons, a further composite subatomic particle.

Interesting facts:

1. They do not look remotely like this generative artwork.

2. The baryon sweep that nearly fries Picard in 'Starship Mine' also features dodgy quark representation.

3. Although the dairy product 'Quark' contains quarks, the quark-containing nature of the product is hardly fundamental to its function or innate ability to form cheesecake.