I know that the weak nuclear force has some role in raidoactive decay but don't know what it is can sombody help me out here?
In certain types of readioactive decay, quark flavours are not conserved. For example, take beta decay: n -> p + e<sup>-</sup> + anti-electron-neutrino The neutron contains two down quarks and one up quark, whilst the proton contains two up quarks and one down quark. The electron and anti-neutrino are not made of quarks. So, somewhere in this process, a down quark has changed into an up quark. That changing process is mediated by the weak nuclear force and is described by the exchange of a charged weak gauge boson. Hope that helps a bit!
Sort of but Im getting the impression that I won't really have a clue untill I understand the math. That about right?
Basically, weak force is important in two types of reactions: The conversion of a neutron to a proton, electron, and antinutrino (beta decay). This happens in neutron stars and some radioactive elements (that have a lot more neutrons than they need). Weak force is also responsible for the reactions in the sun that turns a proton into a neutron, although this takes considerably more energy. Proton decay under normal conditions has still not been prooven because the gauge boson is still theoreticall (to change a proton to a neutron, you have to jam two protons together pretty hard). The second important aspect of weak force is in the decay of heavy fermions (matter) that are not hadrons (protons, etc.). For example, a muon, essentially a really big, unstable electron, cannot decay by means of strong force because it is not a hadron, it is a lepton. So instead, it must undergoe the significantly slower weak interaction to decay (strong reactions occur at 10<SUP>-27</SUP> seconds, while weak interactions take about 10<SUP>-10</SUP> seconds to occur) Alpha decay is an example of strong interaction. There is really no way to win. The more neutrons a nucleus has, the less likely it is to undergoe alpha decay, but the more likely it is to undergo beta decay (because more overall particals=more weak force present, encouraging decay, while more particals overall=more strong force to overcome the repulsive electromagnetic charges of protons in the nucleus, thus discouraging decay).
