# A What is the strength of the strong force in N units

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1. Jun 6, 2017

### Dilema

1. what is the presure of this force (alternativly wat is the efferctiv area it is acting on?....nucleai corrss section area?).

2. Jun 6, 2017

### Orodruin

Staff Emeritus
At the scales over which the strong force is relevant, it is not really appropriate to speak about forces. It is more accurate to talk about the strong interaction.

3. Jun 6, 2017

### Staff: Mentor

The typical length scale of the strong interaction is 1 femtometer, and the typical energy is 100 MeV. If you divide the two, you get 16000 N. This is not a force on anything, but it gives a rough idea how strong the strong interaction is.
A crane can exert the same force on an object (e. g. to lift a car) - but the crane is made out of 1030 atoms, not just a single nucleus.

4. Jun 15, 2017

### Meir Achuz

The strength of the strong force is usually given in terms of $\alpha_s$, the strong equivalent of the electromagnetic fine structure constant $\alpha$. A difference between them is that $\alpha_s$ has a strong variation with momentum transfer in a given process.
$\alpha_s$ is close to 1 at low energies, important for quark model and nuclear static properties, and about 0.1 around the mass of the Z vector boson. There are theoretical speculations that $\alpha_s$ would approach $\alpha$ as the momentum transfer became infinite.