A. Suppose you held two proton, in space , far away from any other objects (so t

Question

A. Suppose you held two proton, in space , far away from any other objects (so that the only force is electrical force between them). How far apart would they need to be so that, if you released them from rest, they would initially accelerate away from each other at one " gee"(i.e.9.8 m/s^2)?

B. If you had one of the proton , in a uniform electric field, in a vacuum chamber near the earth's surface (so that you cannot ignore gravity), what electric field would be required to give the particle an acceleration of 1.0 m/s^2 up?(Need answer in magnitude and direction of the electric field needed.)

Explanation / Answer

To answer your question I must tell you about protons and neutrons. They are not elementary particles, meaning they are composed of even smaller particles. These smaller particles are called ‘‘quarks’’. A proton and a neutron each contain 3 quarks. Now, like the electron has a property called electric charge which lets it interact with the electric field, these quarks have a property called ‘‘color’’ which makes them interact with the strong force. So protons and neutrons actually interact with the strong force because they contain quarks which have ‘‘color’’. Any other particle composed of quarks (or quarks themselves) do interact with the strong force. The group of particles that are composed of quarks, and therefore interact with the strong force, are called ‘‘hadrons’’. An example of those hadrons are particles called Mesons. The next part of your question is about charged particles. If charged particles are hadrons then they are composed of quarks (quarks are electrically charged) and that is why they have charge. Quarks interact together and form the proton. So yes a charged particle doesn’t decompose because it is composed of smaller particles having strong force holding them together. Note however that, like quarks are charged elementary particles, electrons for example are also charged elementary particles, and they are not composed of smaller particles. Actually that is why the electron doesn’t interact with the strong force, it has no quarks and therefore no color. The other part of your question is about range. Actually the strong force has a range of 10^-15 m and any hadron can interact, using the strong force, in this range.

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