Key Stage 5
Meaning
The fundamental forces are the 4 ways in which particles may interact with one another.
About Fundamental Forces
- The fundamental forces can cause particles to change direction or change from one particle into another.
- During the interactions caused by fundamental forces certain properties of particles are conserved, including baryon number, lepton number, charge and strangeness (which is conserved in the strong interaction but not conserved in the weak interaction).
- The four fundamental forces are:
- Strong Nuclear Force - Experienced only by hadrons and responsible for holding quarks together and holding protons and neutrons together in the atomic nucleus.
- Weak Nuclear Force - Experienced by hadrons and leptons and responsible for the decay of particles including radioactive decay.
- Electromagnetic Force - Experienced by particles with charge
- Gravitational Force - Experienced by all particles with mass.