Where does the proton get its energy?

The proton does not follow a certain process when it needs to get energy. This just has energy, and it is positive. This is different from electrons that also come with energy, but it is negatively charged. The energy of the proton is one of its qualities that can make it easier to distinguish from the other particles that can be seen inside the atom.

Even though the proton is already extremely tiny, this is still not an elementary particle which means that it is still composed of other particles that make it the way that it is. The proton is made up of quarks, and these quarks are held together by gluons so that these quarks can make up the proton.

There is no process that “gives” protons and other charged particles charge. They have charge, regardless of being protons, electrons or neutrons. It’s one of their defining properties. And because charge is (as far as we know) absolutely conserved, there is no process that can give a particle charge or take it away.

Protons, in the modern Standard Model of particle physics, are hadrons, and like neutrons, the other nucleon (particles present in atomic nuclei), are composed of three quarks. Although protons were originally are seen as elementary particles, they are now known to be made of three valence quarks: two up quarks of charge +2/3e and one down quark of charge –1/3e.

However, the rest masses of quarks contribute only about 1% of a proton's mass. The remainder of a proton's mass is due to quantum chromodynamics binding energy, including the quarks' kinetic energy and the energy of the gluon fields that bind the quarks together. Because protons are not elementary particles, they have a physical size, though not a definite one. A proton's root mean square charge radius is about 0.84–0.87 fm or 0.84×10−15 to 0.87×10−15 m.

Everything in the universe (as far as we know) consists of microscopic building blocks called atoms. Every atom consists of three main parts: protons, electrons, and neutrons. Protons carry a positive charge, electrons carry a negative charge, and neutrons carry a neutral charge. But did you ever wonder where these subatomic particles get their charge from? By taking a closer look at the proton (and I mean that literally), we can find out.

Modern microscopes don't yet have the capability to observe the building blocks of protons. Scientists, however, have discovered that protons (like electrons and neutrons) consist of even smaller parts called quarks. There are three families of quarks. Each family consists of two different quarks: up/down, charm/strange, top/bottom. Each quark carries a fractional charge. Up, charm, and top quarks each carry a charge of +2/3. Down, strange, and bottom quarks each carry a charge of -1/3. Protons consist of two “up” quarks (each with a charge of +2/3) and one “down” quark (a charge of -1/3). Adding the charges of each quark together (2/3 + 2/3 – 1/3) results in a net charge of +1 for the proton as a whole.