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Electromagnetic Interaction

Key Stage 5

Meaning

The electromagnetic interaction is the mechanism by which all particles with charge affect one another.

About The Electromagnetic Interaction

The electromagnetic interaction is one of the 4 fundamental interactions governing how subatomic particles affect one another.
The electromagnetic interaction causes positively charged particles to repel one another, negatively charged particles to repel one another and opposite charges to attract one another.
The electromagnetic interaction acts to repel protons from one another in the atomic nucleus.
The electromagnetic interaction is mediated by photons.
ElectromagneticForceGraph.png
This graph shows the strength of the force between two protons in the nucleus. The electromagnetic interaction between like charges is repulsive with a range of 0 to ∞. The strength of the force reduces proportional to 1/r2 where r is the distance between the centre of the charge distribution of each particle.