What causes electromagnetic force?
1 Answer
Nov 10, 2017
This is a superb question and I’m not sure I have a brilliant answer to match it, but I’ll have a go.
Explanation:
The electromagnetic force is caused by the exchange of photons (effectively ‘particles’ of light) and the chance of photons being emitted or absorbed is related to the charge on an object.
More specifically the constant that links charge and the emission (or absorption) of a photon is called alpha, the fine structure constant. The Wikipedia article here (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-structure_constant) is good, but quite complex.
