There are a lot of forces at play all around us in the real world
Did you know that just four forces make everything in the Universe work? It’s true! These are known as the “Fundamental Forces of Nature”, and this month, I’m going to give you a quick rundown of each one, starting with…
The Strong Force
Scientists aren’t generally known for their ability to “brand” things. With that in mind, it’s probably no surprise that the strongest of the four fundamental forces is called, “The Strong Force.”
The purpose of the Strong Force is to bind atomic nuclei together. If you remember your basic high school physics, you’ll remember that an atomic nuclei is made up of some number of protons and neutrons. Neutrons have no charge while protons all have a positive charge.
You may also remember that things with the same charge repel each other. So, you might expect all these protons to fly apart and everything in the Universe to disintegrate. That’s where the Strong Force comes in.
The Strong Force overcomes the repulsion of all the positively charged protons and keeps them at just the right distance from each other so that the nuclei don’t fly apart. In fact, the Strong Force is kind of freaky, in that it gets weaker as the protons and neutrons get closer, and it gets stronger as they get further apart!
While the Strong Force is the strongest known force, we don’t actually experience it in our daily lives (other than not suddenly flying apart), because it only operates at distances within the radius of the atomic nucleus.
The Weak Force
Next up is “The Weak Force”. The Weak Force doesn’t hold things together like the Strong Force, instead, it’s what allows elements to “decay” by changing one element into another over time.
For example, The Weak Force is what causes the Carbon-14 atoms to decay at a predictable rate (into Nitrogen-14 atoms), which forms the basis of Carbon-14 dating, which in turn allows us to accurately estimate the age of things.
The Electromagnetic Force
The Electromagnetic Force is one force with two different, and familiar, “faces”: electricity and magnetism.
Electricity is the flow of electrons (which have a negative charge) as they try to move from places that have a net negative charge, to a place that has a net positive charge.
Magnetism is a force that presents itself as a field that either attracts or repels physical objects based on their own magnetic properties. Most of us have experience with this from simple iron magnets that we played with as kids.
The relationship between these two seemingly different forces becomes apparent when you work out that one can create the other. For example, a magnetic field can be generated by passing an electric current through a coiled wire. We call this an “electromagnet”, and it’s the basis of things like audio speakers and MRI machines.
More importantly, an electric current can be generated by moving a magnetic field across a wire. For example, a turbine (like one in a hydroelectric dam), will use water to spin magnets around coils of copper wires. This induces an electric current in the wires which is then distributed to the power grid. This electric current then powers the devices connected to the power grid.
Gravity
Finally, we have gravity. Gravity is the force we have the most experience with in our daily lives, but it’s also the weakest force there is. (Don’t believe me? Take a fridge magnet and use it to pick up a paper clip. That fridge magnet is defeating the entire gravity of the Earth when it picks up that paper clip!)
Gravity is odd, and can be thought of two different ways: Newton described it as a force that causes every mass in the universe to attract every other mass in the universe. Einstein described Gravity as a property of mass that “warps” space and time so that masses move towards each other.
The more mass something has, the more it warps space-time, the more gravity it has. Both depictions are correct, though Einstein’s is more correct at really large scales.
If all this makes your head hurt, that’s okay. The universe is under no obligation to make sense, and sometimes it’s just straight up weird. But, it’s nice that Science has been able to (mostly) work out how these four forces work, because without this knowledge, our civilization simply couldn’t exist!
Steven W. Disbrow is the proprietor of “Improv Chattanooga” on the South Side of town. He also creates e-commerce systems and reads comic books when he’s not on stage acting like a fool.