Quarks

While strolling around a flea market I spotted a book by Stephan Hawking: "A Brief History Of Time." It was fifty cents and I believed I could not go wrong adding to my knowledge of Time. He mainly divides the book into two parts, the first covers the Cosmos. A great deal of it I have been exposed to, even enjoyed some of it on the Discovery Channel. Of course, in this book there is much detail and it pleased me that I was able to follow it. The second part of the book covered quantum mechanics. Now I am well versed in the Atomic Theory and knew from chemistry that there was something smaller than atoms. Indeed, electrons and protons forming an atom, valences, mass, spinning particles and electronic charges. When he introduced quarks things got very interesting. It was here I began to reread paragraphs and asking myself what is this stuff? I have concluded that in order to understand it all an engineering degree would be of great help. Struggling through the next two chapters brought me to the conclusion that I was not going to understand quantum mechanics. I skipped to his definition of black holes (Hawking's speciality and about which he wrote his thesis) and it was all too confusing, it was necessary to understand what was in the previous chapters. The description of how white dwarfs are created had my head spinning, I just did not understand. The book has been set aside without completion, I do not have enough time to study it all. My understanding will have to wait for when I enter the next world.