After watching a couple of my last force
videos,
you might now be wondering how exactly these forces work.
What mechanisms are behind them.
I mean, in case of two electrons repelling,
it's kind of crazy to think that an electron
can just know that another electron is
there without any eyes
Luckily for us, force-carrying particles provide a reasonable answer.
It would take a whole heck of a lot of genius to do so,
but you might guess that these 'force-carrying particles' may have something to do with carrying out these forces.
You'd be right to assume so.
These particles carry out
and, what we call, mediate the fundamental forces.
Important side note, these
particles are a type of virtual particle
and are also called gauge bosons, but to
avoid big words
I'm just going to stick with calling them force carriers.
All right getting to the point how do particles actually help electrons to see each other.
Well charged particles are constantly
emitting these force-carrying particles
that have momentum and energy.
The energy and momentum that these force carriers have,
kind of just pops into existence
from nowhere.
Which yes is a big no-no in physics,
but there is a way to get around
that.
However, this workaround requires that
they disappear after a very short amount of time.
When another charged particle
just so happens to run into these particles before they disappear,
it then gains that created energy and momentum.
Since these (the energy and momentum) being created from nowhere  is still a big no-no,
the energy and momentum that this new particle just gained,
comes from the original particle that threw out the force carrier.
To recap what I just said,
basically charged particles throw out
force carriers that then run into other charged particles
and when this happens
momentum is exchanged between the two particles.
Think of it as kind of the
same thing as you and your friends
standing in a completely frictionless
surface
and you throw a ball,
that you kind of just summoned from nowhere,
at your friend.
This ball then strikes him  causing him to slide
When you threw the ball you give the ball some momentum and the ball did you.
And when the ball strikes your friend your ball then gives him momentum.
This is kind of what's
going on when one particle exerts a force on another.
Except for, you only get
momentum when the ball strikes your friend.
And also, if you miss the ball
just kind of disappears.
These force carriers are only possible as a result of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
That is the workaround I mentioned
earlier.
What this principle basically says is,
at least for the sake of this
video,
that energy and momentum can kind of just pop into existence.
But the more
that does the less time that it can exist for.
What this means for our force
carrier friends,
is that the more energy and momentum these particles have,
the less time that they can exist for.
Also, it's still in debate is how real these
force carriers are.
they're kind of only a side-effect of the math.
Anyway, the three forces described in this way have their own customized force carriers
that have different properties that account for the properties of the forces that they mediate.
There are 4 of them called:
Virtual photons (which mediate
electromagnetism),
gluons (which mediate the strong force),
and the W and Z bosons
(which mediate the weak force).
In the case of electrons, since they are electrically
charged, they throw out virtual photons.
When these virtual photons are exchanged
between the electrons,
they (the electrons) then get repelled.
and this is exactly how
electrons are able to see each other.
