In school, you learn about forces. You learn about gravity, and you learn about the electromagnetic force. For the electromagnetic force, you learn about how likes repel and opposites attract. So two positively charged particles close together will repel, whereas a positively and a negatively charged particle will attract.
Then you learn about the atom. It consists of a bunch of protons and a bunch of neutrons bunched up in the middle, and then a bunch of electrons orbiting around the outside. You learn that protons are positively charged, electrons negatively charged, and neutrons have no charge. But if protons are positively charged, how can they all be bunched together like that? Don’t like charges repel?
This is a place where people should notice confusion, but they don’t. All of the pieces are there.
I didn’t notice confusion about this until I learned about the explanation: something called the strong nuclear force. Yes, since likes repel, the electromagnetic force is pushing the protons away from each other. But on the other hand, the strong nuclear force attracts them together, and apparently it’s strong enough to overcome the electromagnetic force in this instance.
In retrospect, this makes total sense. Of course the electromagnetic force is repelling those protons, so there’s gotta be some other force that is stronger. The only other force we learned about was gravity, but the masses in question are way too small to explain the nucleus being held together. So there’s got to be some other force that they haven’t taught us about yet that is in play. A force that is very strong and that applies at the nuclear level. Hey, maybe it’s even called the strong nuclear force!
Yes, this was a point of confusion for me. The point of confusion that followed very quickly afterward were why the strong nuclear force didn’t mean that everything piles up into one enormous nucleus, and from there to a lot of other points of confusion—some of which still haven’t been resolved because nobody really knows yet.
The most interesting thing to me is that the strong nuclear force is just strong enough without being too strong. If it was somewhat less strong then we’d have nothing but hydrogen, and somewhat more strong would make diprotons, neutronium, or various forms of strange matter more stable than atomic elements.
I remember this confusion from Jr. High, many decades ago. I was lucky enough to have an approachable teacher who pointed me to books with more complete explanations, including the Strong Nuclear force and some details about why inverse-square doesn’t apply, making it able to overcome EM at very small distances, when you’d think EM is strongest.
Noticing confusion about the nucleus
In school, you learn about forces. You learn about gravity, and you learn about the electromagnetic force. For the electromagnetic force, you learn about how likes repel and opposites attract. So two positively charged particles close together will repel, whereas a positively and a negatively charged particle will attract.
Then you learn about the atom. It consists of a bunch of protons and a bunch of neutrons bunched up in the middle, and then a bunch of electrons orbiting around the outside. You learn that protons are positively charged, electrons negatively charged, and neutrons have no charge. But if protons are positively charged, how can they all be bunched together like that? Don’t like charges repel?
This is a place where people should notice confusion, but they don’t. All of the pieces are there.
I didn’t notice confusion about this until I learned about the explanation: something called the strong nuclear force. Yes, since likes repel, the electromagnetic force is pushing the protons away from each other. But on the other hand, the strong nuclear force attracts them together, and apparently it’s strong enough to overcome the electromagnetic force in this instance.
In retrospect, this makes total sense. Of course the electromagnetic force is repelling those protons, so there’s gotta be some other force that is stronger. The only other force we learned about was gravity, but the masses in question are way too small to explain the nucleus being held together. So there’s got to be some other force that they haven’t taught us about yet that is in play. A force that is very strong and that applies at the nuclear level. Hey, maybe it’s even called the strong nuclear force!
Yes, this was a point of confusion for me. The point of confusion that followed very quickly afterward were why the strong nuclear force didn’t mean that everything piles up into one enormous nucleus, and from there to a lot of other points of confusion—some of which still haven’t been resolved because nobody really knows yet.
The most interesting thing to me is that the strong nuclear force is just strong enough without being too strong. If it was somewhat less strong then we’d have nothing but hydrogen, and somewhat more strong would make diprotons, neutronium, or various forms of strange matter more stable than atomic elements.
I remember this confusion from Jr. High, many decades ago. I was lucky enough to have an approachable teacher who pointed me to books with more complete explanations, including the Strong Nuclear force and some details about why inverse-square doesn’t apply, making it able to overcome EM at very small distances, when you’d think EM is strongest.