What are the rules that govern our universe? In the past people believed it was earth, wind, water & fire. Now we know them as the strong force, weak force, electromagnetic force and gravity. The forces Scientists distinguish four elementary types of forces acting among particles: strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational force. The strong force is responsible for quarks “sticking” together to form protons, neutrons and related particles. The electromagnetic force binds electrons to atomic nuclei (clusters of protons and neutrons) to form atoms. The weak force facilitates the decay of heavy particles into smaller siblings. The gravitational force acts between massive objects. Although it plays no role at the microscopic level, it is the dominant force in our everyday life and throughout the universe. Particles transmit forces among each other by exchanging force-carrying particles called bosons. These force mediators carry discrete amounts of energy, called quanta, from one particle to another. You could think of the energy transfer due to boson exchange as something like the passing of a basketball between two players. Each force has its own characteristic bosons: The gluon mediates the strong force; it “glues” quarks together. The photon carries the electromagnetic force; it also transmits light. The W and Z bosons represent the weak force; they introduce different types of decays. Physicists expect that the gravitational force may also be associated with a boson particle. Named the graviton, this hypothetical boson is extremely hard to observe since, at the subatomic level, the gravitational force is many orders of magnitude weaker than the other three elementary forces.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 14:45:42 +0000
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