thing I had to do for science class that can be passed off as content *wow big science words* An atom is composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons—the protons and neutrons are packed together in a microscopic structure called the nucleus while the electrons, which are more than a thousand times smaller than the protons and neutrons, “orbit” in a sense around it. But why do they stay together in their concrete form, and not just fly off into space? This is because atoms are held together by the electromagnetic force and the strong force. Now, what are the four forces? This is something that must be explained before continuing further. They are the gravitational force—more commonly known as gravity, the electromagnetic force, the weak force, and the strong force. Out of all of these, the most familiar is gravity. With good reason—everyone experiences gravity all day, every day. It’s the thing that makes one fall back to the ground when one jumps. Surprisingly, however, it’s the weakest of all four forces. It can’t even begin to compare with the weak force, let alone the strong force. It takes humongous objects—like the Sun—to have any power at all. The next force is the weak force. This one is a bit less commonly known; it’s the force that causes particle decay. It shoots W bosons—a force particle, the kind of particles that let the forces execute—at protons or neutrons and changes them into neutrons or protons respectively. It is responsible for some radioactive decay in more unstable atoms and is the reason stars burn and eventually burn out. The electromagnetic force was originally thought to be two different things—electricity and magnetism. However, around the early 19th century, physicists began to theorize and enact experiments on the fact that they could possibly be combined. The electromagnetic force does many things, but in respect to atoms, it pulls oppositely charged particles together, and makes particles with the same electrical charge repel each other. A particle can be positively charged or negatively charged—or perhaps have no charge at all, and be neutral. The final force is the strong force. The strong force is the force that negates the electromagnetic force’s property of making particles with the same charge repel each other by making them attracted to each other—over microscopic distances. It also is responsible for binding quarks together to make hadrons—particles like protons and neutrons. While the strong force’s range of influence is quite small, it is still very powerful. As mentioned earlier, the strong force and the electromagnetic force are the forces that help keep atoms together. But how do they help keep atoms together? It’s relatively simple: the electromagnetic force pulls opposite charges together, correct? This explains why the electrons don’t fly away from the nucleus. However, the electromagnetic force also makes like charges repel each other, and this is where the strong force comes in: the strong force pulls like charges together, and especially with the help of neutrons being a sort of “mediator” for the forces of an atom, and protons end up staying together, and tightly packed, in the nucleus. There is also another question we have to ask: what stops electrons from “falling into” the nucleus? If the electromagnetic force pulls like charges together, why aren’t electrons—which are negatively charged—get sucked into the nucleus half-full of protons—which are positively charged? The answer is rather complicated, but it can be summed up to this: electrons don’t exist in physical form, so they can’t really move anywhere—including into the nucleus. Electrons only consist of waves of energy that actually, in fact, enter the nucleus often. However, they don’t get stuck there. While there are times, when there are too many protons in the nucleus due to the weak force, electrons stop their dancing in and out of the nucleus and become localized inside, which is known as “electron capture”. Luckily, however, this isn’t very common—if it was, matter would lose its stability and everything we know would collapse into a handful of nuclei. In conclusion, the holding forces of an atom are the strong force and the electromagnetic force. This is because the electromagnetic force pulls opposite charges together and pushes like charges apart, and the strong force pulls together the like charges the the electromagnetic force pulls apart.
low quality thumb was found on google this painful document was compose by me
