What does strong force mean?
1 Answer
It is one of the four fundamental forces with a very short range.
Explanation:
There are
As the name suggests strong force is really strong. It is more like a contact force because of its extremely short range.
We know that like charges repel each other and in a nucleus, there are a lot of it (except for hydrogen atom).
So, that means proton push each other away in a nucleus but yet protons somehow manage to keep themselves together.
It is clear that the force which holds the nucleus together is much stronger than the Electromagnetic repulsive force between protons.This force is strong nuclear force.
here, this force is carried by mesons.
Experiments show that strong force are about
This force holds the neighbouring protons together because of its short range.
This explains
A simple experiment can demonstrate short range of strong force
Consider uranium atom (a heavy element), as the observations suggest it is unstable because of greater repulsive force, if strong force was stronger than electromagnetic force and with a good range as well then the atoms would have been even heavier and lot more stable but it isn't so.
Consider 2 Protons separated by
Strong force also exists between quarks.
A proton & neutron are made up of smaller units called quarks
In a proton, there are 3 quarks (2 up and 1 down).
up quarks have a charge of
these quarks do repel each other as well but here gluon keeps bouncing between the quarks and hold them together. gluon actually glues sub-atomic particles. gluon is a massless particle so its speed is "c".
Watch these video about strong force