Can anyone explain nuclear recoil..

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. . .to a non-physicist?

I've been reading about CDMS II and trying to grasp how the dectectors work. As I understand it, WIMPS don't believe in the electromagnetic force (or the strong force, or the weak force, right?) so when a WIMP collides with a nucleus in the detector we get collision effects without electomagnetic events. So, how does a collision work in the absence of the strong and EM forces? How does momentum get transferred from the WIMP to the nucleus?

Thanks for any enlightenment (although given the subject, I supposed "enlightenment" isn't quite right. . .)

(I tried to do a search for "nuclear recoil", but the search engine apparently combined the two words with a Bollean OR. Putting the phrase in quotes didn't help. Is there no way to search for a phrase?)
 
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WIMPs are weakly interacting massive particles. Their interaction with the nucleus is via the weak interaction: They exchange a Z boson.
 
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