Do You Know About The Four Fundamental Forces Of Nature? Let's Have A Look At Them

Are you aware of the various forces acting upon you while you are reading this particular article on your computer screen? If not, then let’s have a close look at the forces that keep our planet from crashing into the Sun, or that make the oceans swell to keep the ships upright. If you remember the physics you learned at school, it is possible that you remember that there are four fundamental forces of nature:

1. Gravity
2. The weak force
3. The Electromagnetic force
4. The strong force

Gravity Gravity is an attractive force by nature and acts between any and every object that has mass. As per Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the force of gravity is the cause of the curvature of space-time. It might surprise some of you that gravity is actually the weakest of the four fundamental forces, considering its gravity that's what keeping us glued to the planet, and keeping the moon in orbit around the Earth, the earth in orbit around the sun, the sun in orbit around the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, and so on. The weak force So, if we move up a little bit from gravity, we get to the weak force, and this is the hardest force for us to visualise. The weak force is sometimes called the weak interaction, and it's responsible for radioactive decay, and in particular beta minus and beta plus decay. The weak interaction is 10 to 25th times the strength of gravity. You might be thinking, if this is so strong, how come this doesn't operate on planets or us relative to the Earth? This is because the weak interaction really applies to very small distances. The electromagnetic force Now the next force is the electromagnetic force, which is one that we are more familiar with. So, it kind of puts the weak force in its place; it's 10 to the 12 times stronger than the weak force. The electromagnetic force is responsible for the electric and magnetic effects like the repulsion between similar electrical charges or the interaction of bar magnets. It has an infinite range but is much weaker than the strong force. It can attract or repulse and acts only between pieces of matter carrying an electrical charge. The strong force If you have studied basic chemistry, you must know that a helium atom has two protons in its nucleus, and it has two neutrons. And then it also has two electrons circulating around the nucleus in its orbit. Now the question is, what keeps these two positive charges (Protons) sitting right next to each other, if the electromagnetic force was the only force in play, they would repel each other. The only reason why they're able to stick to each other is because there's an even stronger force than the electromagnetic force operating at very small distances, and that's the strong force.