SMALL

When I went to school back in the dark ages, we were sure that the most elementary of particles were the proton, neutron and electron.  These three, in different quantities, made up all atoms.  We could smirk at those that came before us and were totally unaware that these three even existed.  For the whole history of the Earth, no one new about these things until the Twentieth Century.  Weren't we smart?

Are there school children sitting in small desks spread across the globe, thinking about my generation with pity?  Sorry about how uninformed we were.  They are learning about fermions and bosons.  Fermions are particles such as electrons, positrons, leptons and quarks.  Quarks, of course, make up protons and neutrons.  Bosons include such things as photons and W particles.  If this isn't enough, they've just verified the existence of Majorana fermions which have some characteristics of bosons.

Will it ever end?  How small can we go?  Are we looking so closely at things that we no longer see the forest for the trees?
:-)