the particle-content table
If chemistry has the periodic table, particle physics has its own one-page chart: a tidy grid of every fundamental particle in the Standard Model. The whole of known elementary matter and forces fits in a diagram you could print on a poster — a satisfying reminder that the deepest layer of nature is, at least in its inventory, surprisingly small.
The standard layout has three columns for the three generations of matter, each column holding two quarks on top and two leptons below, so twelve matter particles in all. Off to one side sit the force carriers: the photon, the gluon, the Z, and the W. And in its own spot is the Higgs boson. Each tile usually lists the particle's mass, electric charge, and spin. Read the chart and you can see at a glance which particles are heavy, which carry charge, and how the repeating pattern of generations works. It is the single best summary of what the Standard Model says exists.
Two honest footnotes. First, the table lists particles but not their antimatter twins; for almost every entry there is a mirror antiparticle with opposite charge, effectively doubling the count. Second, the chart shows what is in the model — it does not show what the model is missing, like a particle for dark matter or for gravity. So the table is a complete census of the known fundamentals, not a complete census of nature.
On the familiar chart, the top-left tile is the up quark and the bottom-left is the electron — generation one — while the lone tile for the Higgs boson sits apart from the three repeating columns.
All known fundamental particles on a single poster-sized grid.
Unlike the periodic table, this chart does not predict undiscovered slots to fill — the Standard Model's list is considered complete as it stands, which is partly why its known gaps (dark matter, gravity) are so striking.