Atoms are tiny. Take a look at the thickness of your fingernail and imagine that you could split that thickness into ten million - 10,000,000 - parts. That's the size of the atom.
Take that atom width and split it into 10,000 equal parts and that's the nucleus. One tenth that diameter is the size of a proton or neutron and split that by 1,000 again and you have the quarks from a story two weeks ago.
The atom is the solar system and the nucleus is the sun. The rest is empty.
The nucleus is a pea in the center of a stadium and the rest is just electromagnetic fields with an electron here or there.
And just in case you prefer videos to walk you through the scale of the tiny,
Packed inside that nucleus are all the repulsive positive protons and neutral neutrons. The repulsion is so strong that we can only force nuclei to touch or combine at temperatures and velocities that exist in the fusion core of the sun - 15,000,000 C or 27,000,000 F.
But those proton packed nuclei stick together nonetheless and the force required is called the "Strong Nuclear Force" because it's strong and it's nuclear. The Nuclear Strong Force does not act like other forces. It only has a range of about two big nuclei and beyond that it drops off rapidly.
The nuclear strong force is "mediated" by a particle - like the electromagnetic force and the photon. Since it acts like a glue that holds the nucleus together, the particle related to the strong force is the "gluon." It is a particle that is exchanged between quarks to hold them and nuclei together.
Here is a first-hand perspective from an early researcher in particle physics.
Particle physicists have had to retask words to express what's happening on that scale so quarks have "color" or "color charge." There are quarks and antiquarks with various color charge combinations. Each of 8 gluons has a pair of color charges to satisfy the law of conservation of charge. It's complicated
and fascinating.
No comments:
Post a Comment