Quark confinement?

[psynapse]

How is it that the force between quarks increases as their distance increases? This is very counter intuitive. If this is the case then there must be some way of harnessing this power practically.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_confinement

I am left bewildered upon reading this, with many questions.

What force is the quark confinement force related to? Strong nuclear force? I thought that even this was an inverse square relationship? Any insight?

[5614]

How is it that the force between quarks increases as their distance increases? This is very counter intuitive.

It works very much like an elastic band. The further apart you pull them the harder they resist.

 

Just as when you find the north pole of a magnet there must be a south pole, so quarks come in twos and threes.

 

There isn't technically a proof for that quantum chromodynamics (physics of the strong force) requires confinement to be true, however it is logical, and agrees with all experimental data, that confinement exists.

[psynapse]

I really like that elastic band analogy. Thanks. I suppose it isn't all that counter intuitive when put that way.

So form my understanding this is to explain why we never "see" free singular quarks?

[5614]

That is correct.

 

The thing with quantum physics is that it does make sense, but not 'normal sense'. If you look at the everyday world around us then the average object is made from a massive amount of atoms and molecules. The quantum effects, which come into play on a molecular level (and smaller), are simply far too small to see on a more normal scale.

 

Consequently the way we think, with objects of an everyday size, would be considered as thinking 'classically'. Now part of the thing with quantum mechanics (QM) is that it is very non-classical. Whilst objects on an everyday scale behave classically* objects on a molecular scale behave quantum mechanically. If you naturally thought using QM (no one does) then things such as quark confinement seem logical.

 

* technically speaking all objects behave quantum mechanically, it's just that once you get to the size of a few cells it is 'too big' for these effects to be of any significance, and objects seem to behave purely classically.

 

Also once you get up to very high speeds (significant fractions of the speed of light) thing which are 'normally', or classically, logical are no longer true. At high speeds you need to think relativistically. Classically you can always apply a bit more force to go a bit faster and so in theory you could go faster than light (this is impossible), relativity showed that the classical theory is incorrect.