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FOR AGES 10 AND UP

INFORMATION - FORCE CARRIER - BASIC

Dear Friend:

We knew something about the four fundamental forces of nature and the idea of the grand unified force.

 Now let us know something else.

If you want to move a table, you have to touch it and push it. You see your hand pushing it.

If you want to move a piece of paper, you have to blow an air and you see it moves. You feel the air blowing.

It means that for the force to act you need contact.

But the fundamental forces of nature seem to act at a distance, without any apparent contact.

For example, the apple falls from tree on the ground without any thing touching it.

The magnet attracts the metal from a distance without the force being visible.

The electric current pass through the wire but we can't see it.

World has observed the energy or force hidden in the atom when the atom bomb blasts.

To act the force has its own arrangement or system.

Each of the four forces has its own exchange particle, which acts as a carrier of the force.

Sometimes we see them, sometimes we observe them in a laboratory, and sometimes we can not observe in our laboratory but still we believe that they are their by their action.

Carrier particles generally have no mass and no electric charge.

They are simply small packages or pockets or quantum of energy of different amounts-quantum bundles of a certain definite size.

The carrier of gravity is a particle called Graviton. It has never been observed in any experiment.

In future, one of you might observe it!

Scientists say that graviton has no mass.

The carrier of the electric force is Photon.

When the sun shines or when you turn on the lamp, you see the series of photons coming to you.

Photon has no mass.

The carriers of the weak force are of three kinds. They are known as the W+, the W-, and the Z° particles.

Sometimes, the force carriers for the weak force are known as Intermediate Vector Bosons.

Unlike the other exchange particles, which have no mass, the weak force exchange particles have a huge mass!

The carrier of the strong force is called a Gluon.

Initially it was thought that the gluon is the particle that "glues" neutrons and protons together in the nucleus and prevents the nucleus from disintegrating.

But now we know that gluons are the exchange particles or force carriers between the quarks.

Gluon is a zero mass particle with no electric charge.

Unlike photons, which do not have any electric charge and hence do not attract or repel each other, gluons have color charge and they interact with each other.

Therefore, the strong force is sometimes called the Color force.

Just as there are three different carrier particles for the weak force, gluons come in 8 different varieties.

The strong force is transmitted by these eight different varieties of gluons.

Some gluons can change the color of the quark they interact with.

If we add up all elementary particles along with their antiparticles, we arrive at

12 leptons (each of 6 lepton with 6 antiparticle),

36 quarks ( each of 6 quark has 3 different colors and each of 18 quarks with 18 antiquarks), and

13 force carriers (8 gluons plus 3 vector bosons plus 1 photon and 1 graviton).

A total of 61 particles.

In conclusion, all matter is made up of three kinds of elementary particles for now:

Leptons, Quarks, and Force Carriers.

We call this as the Standard Model.

61 particles?

That's simple?

Doesn't look "fundamental."

The search for simplicity should continue.

And the answer is in You!

Today's kids are tomorrow's answer.

GREAT!!!

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