An electrical force within an atomic particle?

Answer 1

I'll first make a question out of your collection of words and then attempt to answer that.

Lets assume you've been asked to answer 'What is the electric force within an atom. '

First, a couple of Points to Ponder:

1. An atom is not a particle in the sense of 'elementary particle'. It is thought to be ~99.9999999999999% space with a (small) nucleus at its centre and a field of electron type matter surrounding the nucleus to a radius of about 10^5 times the size of the nucleus.

2. Within a 'normal-for-our existence' atom, it is commonly thought that there are two types of charged matter. The proton and the 'electron'. The protonic matter is found within in the central part of a stable atom, called the nucleus, and the 'electron' matter is thought to be what causes the atom to have an effective radius (when considering its spatial interactions with other atoms ) that is about 10^5 times the radius of the nucleus. The electron matter exists within this relatviely (to the nucleus) large volume of space. This is no lump of rock.

If you opt for the simplistic (and incorrect) assumption that an 'electron' is a particle in the everyday sense, then you could possibly claim that the most significant electrical force within an atom acting over its whole volume is the Coulomb electrostatic attraction between the normally (for our universe) positively charged (adopting the well-worn but completely arbitrary convention regarding charge sign) nucleus and the oppositely charged electron matter.

Moving on, if you are still with this (and I appreciate its not easy), if you accept that the 'electron' is not a particle in the every day sense, but more of a something that is spread about the nucleus, perhaps a wave-like thing that contains 'electron' type distributed matter (although in total adding up to 1 unit of elementary charge [the charge of 'an electron']!) then you can still possibly claim that the (most significant?) electrical force within an atom is the Coulomb electrostatic attractve force between the nucleus (a collection of positively charged protons plus other things) and the 'electron' field. It is commonly thought that it is this attracive force that causes a stable atom to remain an atom, it keeps the electron stuff from wandering elsewhere and not surrounding the nucleus. If the nucleus loses its 'electrons' it becomes les part of an atom and more just a small (1/10^15 of the size of an atom), tightly bound collection of elementary particles (with a strong affinity for any 'electrons' wandering around).

Other electrical forces within the atom will be the repulsive Coulomb electrostatic forces between the similarly charged entities held in the atom, namely between the protons (in the nucleus and held there therfore by some other 'attractive' force that overcomes the electrostatic repulsion) and the force between volume elements of electron matter. This repulsive force is probably not as big as the force mentioned above that attracts the negatively charged 'electon' matter field to the, positive, nuclear charge.

Hope this has not been too complicated. There is currently no simple answer that has elements of truth.

Answer 2

The electrical force within an atomic particle is the force of attraction or repulsion between charged particles such as electrons and protons. This force is responsible for keeping particles bound within the atom and determining the chemical properties of elements. The strength of this force is governed by the distance between the particles and their respective charges.

Answer 3

proton