Force force. Here the strong force acts indirectly, transmitted as gluons, which form part of the virtual pi and rho mesons, which classically transmit the nuclear force (see this topic for more). The failure of many searches for free quarks has shown that the elementary particles affected are not directly observable. This phenomenon is called color confinement. The weak force is due to the exchange of the heavy W and Z bosons. Its most familiar effect is beta decay (of neutrons in atomic nuclei) and the associated radioactivity. The word "weak" derives from the fact that the field strength is some
Weak interaction distances, less than the diameter of a proton. It is one of the four known fundamental interactions of nature, alongside the strong interaction, electromagnetism, and gravitation. The Standard Model of particle physics provides a uniform framework for understanding the electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions. An interaction occurs when two particles, typically but not necessarily half-integer spin fermions, exchange integer-spin, force-carrying bosons. The fermions involved in such exchanges can be either elementary (e.g. electrons or quarks) or composite (e.g. protons or neutrons), although at the deepest levels, all weak interactions ultimately are between elementary particles. In the case of the weak