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Articles: My Thoughts | In quest of Infinity-06
- Prof. venkata ramanamurty mallajosyula
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May sound simple but in practice, as one goes deeper and deeper into the atom, both theory and experiment become quite challenging and difficult. This is the game for the big boys! But a lot of big boys did get in there and did wonders; no wonder many of them picked up the coved Noble!
The Fundamental Forces
So much for the building blocks. What about the forces via which this basic building blocks operate? In the beginning, discovery of forces came about quite independently; it is only after say 1950 that the study of the basic forces and the building blocks started going hand in hand. Well, how many different kinds of basic forces do we have and what do we know about them? The basic forces have already been enumerated; there are four of them.
Historically, the first to be discovered was the gravitational force. As you perhaps know, Newton made that discovery, and it was an important moment in history. Newton said matter attracts matter, always. It does not matter if the piece of matter is big or small; a big stone thrown upwards is attracted by the earth and falls; so does a small stone. You may say a feather does not fall easily as compared to say a ball with the same mass. Well, the force of attraction depends only on 1) the masses of the two objects concerned and 2) the distance separating them.
Feather falls softly because of the atmosphere, which acts like a cushion. Take that same feather to the Moon [where there is no air] and drop it there; you will find the feather and the ball with the same mass would fall at the same rate.
From the gravitational force, we turn next to the electromagnetic force which operates between any two charged particles. Thus, since the electron and the proton both carry electrical charge, there is between the two, an electromagnetic force as well as a gravitational force. However, the gravitational force acting between the two is so small [about one part in 1 followed by may be 40 zeros!], that the gravitational force between the electron and the proton is completely ignored, as was done by Niels Bohr when he developed the theory of the hydrogen atom.
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