It takes 3 quarks to make a proton, but a free quark is 180-times more massive than a proton. I assume that when quarks combine an enormous amount of bond energy is released, just as when protons fuse in the core of the Sun.
In any finite volume of space there must be fewer massive quarks than protons, so if only 1/3rd of a proton mass comes from any given quark, then only 1/540th of a quark mass is used in each proton. To use up all the bond energy, each quark must contribute to as many as 540 protons. How can a proton contribute 1/540th of it's mass but all of its charge to a proton? There would be no charge to contribute to the other 539 protons that it contributed mass to. Doesn't this violate conservation of charge?
Question for a physicist
