The Forces of Nature

Abstract

Very few fundamental forces are responsible for the myriad of phenomena in the world. Indeed, all chemical and biological structures are cemented by only one force: electromagnetism. Physics is greedier: it appeared to require four basic forces, gravity and the strong and weak nuclear forces in addition to electromagnetism. However, recent experiments have reduced these to three. The properties of the forces are discussed and the work that unified two of them is described.