Glad I chose chemistry to study over physics, certainly seems a lot easier to understand! Quantum mechanics is covered on my degree course (in only 2nd year) and i've done a couple of courses on it, but nothing other than to compliment chemistry and molecular orbital theory. Saying that, i've probably already forgotten a heap!
What makes particles stick?
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I used the word imbalance because it depends on difference in amounts of negative charge.
Worth remembering that all electrons only have negative charge (positrons/protons have proper positive charge)
So how much negative charge is there relates to how much overall charge there is.
BTW - Alex, to understand why charges attract/repel. you need to consider the potential created by a charge. the shape of this potential is diffferent for positive/negative charges so you get attraction/repulsion
Caporegime
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Also, when a dead body decays over time, what happens with this "strong" charge? Should I assume the skin of a person is strong when alive but weak when dead an decaying? or a weak charge?
wat
I think you have the wrong end of the stick, clearly we've fast accelerated beyond the actual question you were asking.
Decay is just a chemical process. Bacteria in and around our bodies metabolise and break down our molecules for energy and growth when we die. The actual atoms don't change at all, they still remain a carbon atom as it was when it was in our body, just bonded to other atoms in a different way, making a different molecule or substance.
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Ok sid, if we have 2 atoms stuck together,and then another atom comes along which is repulsive to one but attracted to the other (and all charges are of equal measure) what would happen if the third atom was placed at the join of the 2 initial?
i think you are suffering from physics overload mate.
Colour charge hold quarks together.
Weak charge is only involved in interations like radioactive decay, You don't come across this stuff in day to day life.
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Yes it would make another substance but I was wondering if the charge between the atoms is lost?
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Charge is always conserved as far as I understand. This, in atoms coming together, is due to movement of electrons between them. Therefore, you can't spontaneously create a charge without moving it somewhere else.
I consider it to be a function of the nature of a fundamental particle's inherent interaction cross-section with virtual photons.
Though I'm not sure there is really a physicist who could tell you without ending up as a circular argument or deferring as I have to the standard model.
comes to down the electronegativity of each atom... which is the ability to attrach an electron cloud
generally speaking if you look at the periodic table... the atom gets more electronegative if you go from left to right and down to up!
Thats very hard to say without exact details I'm afraid. Theres no general solution to something like that.
I think the chemists might have somethign to say about that. If theres a bond between the first two but the third one is more attractive to either of the first two. then the first two can break up and one of them runs off with the third one lol
Alex- the charge is the fundamental quantity here. The charge creates an electrostatic potential around it which interacts with other charges. This is easiest to see when you have two electrons. or two protons or 1 of each.
sid
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You actually need 4 nucleons to produce a helium nucleus (2 protons and 2 neutrons); a hydrogen nucleus is just a single proton. In order to produce helium you'd probably have to use a deuterium-tritium mixture (or possibly just deuterium).
The photon is a boson!
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Think about what you're doing if you carry a ball to the top of the stairs... you're moving an object through a gravitational field. You're putting energy in to the system, by carrying the object through the field, and whilst the ball sits at the top of the stairs, it has potential energy. Roll the ball of the top, and the ball will fall to the floor, its potential energy being converted in to kinetic energy.
And you can think of separating charged particles in an electric potential in the same way.
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One last question... Is there a length of time these charges last for? Or are they infinite?
Charge is always conserved - that means that you can't create a proton (positive charge) without also creating an electron (negative charge). Proton decay is theorised, but hasn't ever been seen, but even then the electrical charge of the proton is still conserved as a positron.
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The overall quantity of charge in the universe is conserved, but individual charged particles can be destroyed and created. How long a particle is around for depends on the particle and the system it's a part of.