system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Are nucleons greater than the sum of their quarks?

Is there a difference between saying "this Helium atom has 2 protons and 2 neutrons" rather than saying "this helium atom has 6 up and 6 down quarks" (2 protons = 4 up 2 down, 2 neutrons = 4 down 2 up).
gpt
Yes. The three valence quarks in a proton make up about 1% of its total mass.The rest comes from the binding energy holding them together. The quarks in nucleons are confined, you can basically talk about protons and neutrons as discrete units.