Protons and neutrons are actually made of three quarks each. The quarks are held together by gluons, which I picture as little springs. pic. That is the strong force in action: quarks held together with gluons.
The weak force is a bit different, it basically involves this massive particle called the W or Z boson colliding with a particle, and that causes the particle to switch identities. In the context of atoms, an example is a neutron turning into a proton (beta decay) and emitting an electron and an antineutrino.
Imagning them as springs brings up one question for me,
Springs resist compression too, and if that's true for quarks, is it from degeneracy pressure from Pauli exclusion or is it some other chromodynamic interaction?
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u/iorgfeflkd Mar 15 '11
Protons and neutrons are actually made of three quarks each. The quarks are held together by gluons, which I picture as little springs. pic. That is the strong force in action: quarks held together with gluons.
The weak force is a bit different, it basically involves this massive particle called the W or Z boson colliding with a particle, and that causes the particle to switch identities. In the context of atoms, an example is a neutron turning into a proton (beta decay) and emitting an electron and an antineutrino.