Talk:Strong interaction

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the gluon the quanta of the strong force? Thus the strong force wouldn't bind gluons, but it binds the other particles via gluons.

See the last paragraph: the strong force is special in that the mediating particles have color themselves, and so bind to one another. This effect is what makes the strong force strong - it actually increases with distance. Actually, the W bosons have weak charge, but the self-binding is minimal because they are very massive and thus short-ranged.

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[edit] Whoaaa hang on there - you would need to be Steven Hawkins to understand this article

Before I go any further may I first of all congratulate everyone involved with this article. I have huge admiration for those of you amongst us with brilliant minds whom push the boundaries of science and the understanding of the very fabric which make up our universe.

But I have to say for the laypersons amongst there is absolutely no chance of trying to fathom what this article is about. Could it be simplified at all? The whole purpose of wikipedia is to educate people, and just like the atom itself we need to break this article down into comprehensable bite size chunks to allow the lay person to understand the concepts put forward here.

Im know the the author(s) have not deliberately tried to make this hard to follow, and its clear that a lot of hard work went into producing this information in a bid to enlighten us to the magical world of the atom. I would feel even more enlightened and benefited by a more simplified explation of this subject.

This article ought to treat the strong force and the rest of its surrounding theory as theory rather than fact. Ezra Wax 14:48, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Also the analogy of a rubber band breaking to illustrate the formation of new quarks is a poor one. Anyone who has pulled a rubber band apart knows it almost *always* breaks at one point and so the result of breaking a rubber band is almost always one linear piece of rubber and in fact NO rubber bands result from breaking one rubber band. Even in the rare instances where the rubber band breaks at two points the result is two linear pieces of rubber and still no rubber bands have been created, only destroyed. The analogy is not just poor it seems, but rather is a failed analogy. Scientists getting sloppy with words as it were. It does not help to illustrate the topic but only generates misleading connections.


I think we should nor mix the strong interaction and the nuclear interaction, referred in this article as residual strong force which is not a term used by the people in the field. Actually, nuclear interactions (theoretically mediated by mesons) deserves an own article which I would like to write if I have time. --Philipum 13:33, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

If the terms "residual" and "fundamental" are not be used in the field, according to Philipum, (I thought they were, but he might know better...), then we will remove them. However, I feel that his word choice is at times vague. Excessive use of the word "nuclear", and over-long sentences... Maybe we should substitute the correct terms for "residual" and "fundamental" but leave the structure of the paragraph basically the same. Rmrfstar 18:14, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
OK, maybe residual force is used by particle physicists (high-energy physics at the GeV level) who may not make any difference between strong and nuclear force. But nuclear physicists (physics of nuclei at the MeV level where QCD can not be applied but effective meson theories are applied instead) use the term nuclear interaction. I will try to make it clear. Feel free to change my changes and we will see what it becomes. --Philipum 08:45, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] quark-gluon plasma

I think that nobody has got evident observation of quark-gluon plasmas yet. Thus, it is still an hypothetical state of matter and I propose to be more careful when saying that they are studied or the the interaction is modifyed etc. --Philipum 09:22, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] gluon to gluon

i got a question: since gluons have color charge, does that mean gluons emit gluons from themselves to other gluons? otherwise there'll be no force between them. but if its like that then the strong fore is too hard for the human mind!? even for mesons!!! i cant even start to picture the exchange for baryons

Yes, they do. It makes things a bit harder, particularly in the strong-coupling limit, but computerized techniques can handle the situation pretty well. -- Xerxes 19:01, 2005 Jun 13 (UTC)

[edit] Waffle

Wouldn't it be more helpful to primarily describe the process that occurs in nuclear interactions, rather than go on about its history and other relatively useless information for the bulk of the article? This article does not remotely explain what it is or what it does. All this article does is bandy about lofty terms relating to quarks and particle physics, but nowhere does it provide an adaquate explanation of the topic. An article about strong force/strong interaction should start with "The force that binds the elements of the nucleus. The interaction involves whatever changing into whatever, and exhanging whatever, where the initial particles are whatever and the products are whatever", and the information that would easily describe the force would be supplied.

I don't like to respond to anonymous comments, but this is constructive.
Since there are detailed pages on quantum chromodynamics on one hand and the nuclear force on the other, the purpose of this article is not mainly physics, but to explain why both subjects are called strong interactions. Why is it an article and not a redirect? Because other articles refer to strong interaction in either senses of the phrase (radioactive decay and grand unified theory both link here), and one needs a bit of an explanation about the two contexts. The first para sets out the context, the remainder gives a structure to related articles. Bambaiah 06:19, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)
This page really should describe what the force actually does instead of the long explaination of how it works. (It's fine to have that below in sections, in my opinion.) So, simply, I agree with the anonymous poster.--24.25.234.38 3 July 2005 10:03 (UTC)
I agree with these guys; after taking a year and a half of college chemistry and physics, I can barely even understand the introduction; going into technical terms later on in the article is fine, but it should be in as plain english as possible in the introductory paragraph. K.I.S.S. --132.177.122.147 13:46, 26 June 2006

[edit] Agree with Confusing

I see little or no explanation. Referencing concepts that the average user has no knowledge in is useless...

Where is the explanation of what the consequences of the strong force vs. electromagnetic force? It is the basis of fission and fusion, yet mechanics is only explained. Please will someone write a knowledgeable piece of lecture on the reasoning of nuclear fundamentals, i.e. nuclear bombs, E=mc2, how the sun is able to overcome the EM force to bind protons within the short distance the strong force works on. Encyclopedias should not be for the 'knowledgeable' but to teach in layman's terms, with deeper theory as further details.-Michael (talk) 21:15, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Confusing

Someone needs to put in what this means in the most basic terms possible. You can't understand this if you aren't in college physics!

aggreed - I would do it myself if I could understand it. Mabey add a "Layman's terms" section? --Wavemaster447 16:30, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Isn't there a simple english page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.182.177.191 (talk) 12:23, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Do we really know what the strong force is?

Maybe there should be a bit on how we don't actually know why the neutron sticks to the proton? Or what gravity is really...

--Wavemaster447 16:30, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Energy of the Strong Nuclear Force in protons...

Does anyone know the energy, in Joules, that would be required to overcome the strong nuclear force that holds together the quarks in a single proton?

--RandomPerson 20:35, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

There is no energy-- or rather it is infinite-- because the force between quarks is 100 newtons or so, and doesn't decrease with distance! So the farther you separate them, the more energy you burn, until you burn so much that new quarks are created out of the work you're doing on the system. SBHarris 00:25, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scaling

How does the strong force decay as the distance between nucleons increases? Is it 1/r^2 or more? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.65.94.39 (talk) 20:52, 4 March 2007 (UTC).

More. The potential with distance r is something like (exp-Ar)/Br. SBHarris 00:26, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hard to understand?

I noticed there is a template on this article that says it is unclear. I went to the same page on the Simple English Wikipedia, and found that the page there also had a template saying it was hard to understand. Someone the Person (talk) 21:51, 7 January 2008 (UTC)