The Strong Nuclear Force Increases with Distance

Super fact 129 : Most fundamental forces of nature, gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, become weaker as the distance between the objects with the charges increase, except for the strong nuclear force, which grows stronger, not weaker, when the distance between the quarks increases. The strong nuclear force is strange in other ways too. Unlike the electric force which has two forms of charges, positive and negative, the strong nuclear force has three forms of charge denoted red, blue, and green. It has actually six kinds of charges if you count anti-red, anti-blue, and anti-green. I can add that the strong nuclear force is the strongest fundamental force in nature.

As you may know, atoms consist of particles. Electrons surround the nucleus of the atom. The nucleus of the atom is in the middle of the atom, and it consists of protons and neutrons. Electrons have a negative charge. Protons have a positive charge. Neutrons do not have an electrical charge. Electrons are so called elementary particles. They are not composed of other particles. Protons and Neutrons, on the other hand, are not elementary particles. They are composite particles consisting of quarks, gluons and quark pairs called mesons.

Quarks have electric charges, just like an electron and a positron, which is why a proton has an electric charge, a positive electric charge. However, as mentioned, in addition quarks have something called color charge. Unlike electric charges, which come in two forms, negative and positive, they come in three forms red, green and blue. In addition, there are also anti-red, anti-green, and anti-blue charges, making it six forms of charges. I should say that the color charges, red, green and blue, are not real colors. They are just names. Just like electric charges are associated with electric forces; color charges are associated with the nuclear strong force.

If you take an equal amount of positive and negative electric charges you get something that is electrically neutral. If you take an equal amount of red, green and blue you get what is called white, or neutral. If you take an equal amount of red and anti-red you also get white. Any other mix gives you a net color charge. As mentioned, unlike, for example, gravity or electromagnetism, which get weaker as objects move apart, the strong force grows stronger as quarks are pulled apart and weaker when they are squeezed together. This strange feature is referred to as Asymptotic Freedom.

As you separate a quark further and further from another the attractive strong force grows stronger and stronger until it becomes super strong, and at about 10,000 Newtons, which is more than one hundred billion times stronger than the force between an electron and a proton in a hydrogen atom it will finally quickly dimmish as if it was a rubber band that snapped. This event will create new particles and quarks, but not free quarks. 10,000 Newtons correspond to a weight of 2,200 pounds, like a small car. However, remember that we are talking about objects that are a trillion times smaller (in diameter) than one millimeter.

Not only is the nuclear strong force increasing with distance until it snaps, which is kind of strange, but by the time it snaps the force is shockingly gigantic for such a small particle. Therefore, this is a fact that is mind-blowing and kind of important to our understanding of the Universe and therefore I think it is a super-fact. With these kinds of forces inside the atomic nucleus no wonder we can blow up large cities using small amounts of the right matter.

The Other Fundamental Forces Become Weaker with Distance

As mentioned, the other fundamental forces gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak nuclear force get weaker as objects move apart. You may say what about friction, pressure, pulling a rope, and attraction between atoms in a molecule? Well, they are not fundamental forces and composed of electromagnetic forces at the bottom. Also, electric and magnetic forces are combined into electromagnetism because they are fundamentally the same thing.

Gravity gets Weaker as Masses Move Apart

The force of gravity gets weaker as masses such as planet Earth, the moon, and the sun are separated further. Newtons law of gravity states that every object in the universe attracts every other object with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers.

This does not happen with the strong nuclear force.

The Electromagnetic Force gets Weaker as Objects Move Apart

The electric force gets weaker as the charges are separated further. Coulombs law is similar to Newtons law of gravity. The force between them is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers.

Again, this does not happen with the strong nuclear force. It is different. The strong nuclear force is strange and very strong.

What is a Quark?

You can learn more about Quarks and the strong force by watching this 10 minute video below. The strong nuclear force is discussed towards the end of the video.

Other Physics Related Superfacts

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• Radon Represents our Largest Exposure to Ionizing Radiation
• We are Star Dust
• The Speed of Light In Vacuum Is a Universal Constant
• Two events may be simultaneous for some but not for others
• The Strange Worlds of Exoplanets
• The vastness of space and the beginning of infinity
• The Bizarre Reality of Black Holes
• Every Symmetry is Associated with a Conservation Law
• GPS uses relativity for accuracy
• Time Dilation Goes Both Ways
• The Pole-Barn Paradox and Solution
• The Enormous Kuiper belt
• Time is a Fourth Dimension
• Electric Charge is not the only type of Fundamental Charge
• Superfluid Liquids are Like Magic
• The Edge of the Observable Universe is 46.5 billion Light Years Away
• Magnetars Super Magnets in the Sky
• Neutron Stars Trillions of Times Denser than the Sun
• The Universe has a Redshift and its Increasing
• Electrons Have Spin Without Spinning
• We Can See What Stars Are Made of
• Stars Twinkle but Planets Do Not
• Pulsars the Cosmic Lighthouses
• Light is Beyond the Reach of Time
• The speed of light is the speed of causality

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