Starting with the premise that the electric charge associated with fundamental fermions (quarks and leptons) can, under certain circumstances, be appropriately represented as a real \emph{ internal} 2-vector, the mathematical ``machinery'' implicit in the associated internal 2-space is shown to apply to \emph{ all} fundamental fermions. In particular, it is shown that \emph{ flavor eigenstates}, \emph{ flavor doublets} and \emph{ families} of fundamental fermions can all be represented in the 2-space, and that such things as internal \emph{ colors}, \emph{ family replication}, and the observed \emph{ number} (three) of families, are more-or-less implicit in the new 2-space description. Moreover, the model predicts that, unlike the case in the standard model, particles such as the $u$, $c$ and $t$ quarks are characterized by significant internal (topological and other) differences. Similar differences may help explain recent observations of (nearly) maximal $\nu_{ \mu}-\nu_{ \tau}$ mixing.
Categories: physics.gen-ph