How to Use weak force in a Sentence

weak force

noun
  • To the east, the Soviet Union is a much weaker force and still Germany’s ally.
    Bartle Bull, WSJ, 9 May 2019
  • In this scenario, a WIMP would tap an atomic nucleus via the weak force.
    Rebecca Boyle, WIRED, 13 Jan. 2019
  • That tiny asymmetry would signal the effect of the weak force, and its size would reveal the spatial spread of the neutrons.
    Adrian Cho, Science | AAAS, 27 Apr. 2021
  • This process is driven by the weak force, and since the early 1900s, physicists sought an explanation for why and how atoms decay.
    John Conway, The Conversation, 14 Apr. 2022
  • This happens when the quarks exchange a particle called a W boson — one of the carriers of the weak force, with an electric charge of either +1 or −1.
    Quanta Magazine, 22 Oct. 2020
  • The scientists focused on the weak interaction, also known both as the weak force and the weak nuclear force.
    Charles Q. Choi, Space.com, 26 Sep. 2018
  • The particle has its roots in studies of the weak force, which controls the decay of radioactive elements.
    Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 9 Sep. 2022
  • The corresponding force particles are called the W and Z bosons (for the weak force), gluons (for the strong force) and photons (for the electromagnetic force).
    Andreas Crivellin, Scientific American, 23 Oct. 2022
  • The left-handedness of the weak force has subtle effects that couldn’t have influenced the cosmos on galactic scales.
    Katie McCormick, Quanta Magazine, 5 Dec. 2022
  • Electromagnetism is a force that acts at large distances, but the weak force acts only at very short distances — smaller than the nucleus of an atom.
    BostonGlobe.com, 27 July 2021
  • The weak force only operates at very short distances, which suggests that the particles that mediate it (the W and Z bosons) are likely to be massive.
    Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 9 Sep. 2022
  • His work in showing how electromagnetism and the weak force could be jointly viewed as the electroweak force was made known to the world in a paper published in 1967 in the Physical Review Letters.
    Washington Post, 26 July 2021
  • To find dark matter, physicists like Cushman are banking on the particles to interact with normal matter through the weak force.
    Emily Toomey, Smithsonian Magazine, 3 Feb. 2020
  • These particles would interact with ordinary matter via the weak force, which is one of the four fundamental forces in the universe.
    Will Sullivan, Discover Magazine, 6 Jan. 2022
  • Gravity is a very weak force, and measuring it with such precision is an amazing achievement.
    Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, 31 Mar. 2011
  • What will govern the economy if mass consumption becomes a weaker force?
    Marilynne Robinson, Harper's magazine, 10 June 2019
  • Neutrinos eschew the strong and electromagnetic forces, maintaining only the most tenuous of ties to the rest of the universe through the weak force and gravity.
    Quanta Magazine, 8 Dec. 2016
  • The electromagnetic force is identical for both spin configurations of the electron, while the weak force cares very much about the spin direction of the electron.
    Don Lincoln, Forbes, 7 May 2021
  • There’s just one boson (the massless photon) for the electromagnetic force, three (the massive W-and-Z bosons) for the weak force, eight (massless gluons), and one (massive) Higgs boson.
    Ethan Siegel, Forbes, 8 Sep. 2021
  • Previous research found that a universe where the weak force is entirely absent could still be habitable.
    Charles Q. Choi, Space.com, 26 Sep. 2018
  • Thus, weak force interactions will happen either more or less, depending on the electron’s spin.
    Don Lincoln, Forbes, 7 May 2021
  • Such a thin fiber is extremely compliant, so even a very weak force yields a relatively large rotation.
    Ben Brubaker, Scientific American, 10 Mar. 2021
  • These particles convey one of the four fundamental forces, called the weak force, which causes radioactive decay.
    Quanta Magazine, 7 Aug. 2019
  • The prizewinners studied weak-force interactions at high energies by creating a beam of neutrinos, which do not interact through the strong force but do so by the weak force.
    Washington Post, 17 Dec. 2020
  • These were the relatively familiar forces of electromagnetism and gravity as well as two forces that act on subatomic particles, the strong force and the weak force.
    Washington Post, 26 July 2021
  • In universes with a weaker weak force, neutrons would decay more slowly, leading to more helium.
    Charles Q. Choi, Space.com, 26 Sep. 2018
  • But some researchers have proposed a type of neutrino that doesn't interact via the weak force, leaving its only interactions to come via gravity.
    John Timmer, Ars Technica, 8 June 2018
  • In the 1960s, a series of theoretical and experimental breakthroughs proposed that the weak force is transmitted by particles called W and Z bosons.
    John Conway, The Conversation, 14 Apr. 2022
  • The breaking of the Higgs symmetry created massive spin-1 particles called W and Z bosons, the carriers of the weak force that’s responsible for radioactive decay.
    Quanta Magazine, 9 Dec. 2019
  • The particle's existence would force a rewriting of the fundamental forces governing the universe, which up to now have included only the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force and the gravitational force.
    Fox News, 10 Dec. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'weak force.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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