Why don't the atoms fall about after collision? And what would be the physics of it staying together?
Do you mean "fall apart"? Sometimes they do, at least partially. It is quite easy to knock electrons off an atom, for example. When atoms bond together following a collision it is due to electrostatic forces.
"In particle physics, the strong interaction (also called the strong force, strong nuclear force, or color force) is one of the four fundamental interactions, along with gravitation, the electromagnetic force and the weak interaction. The word strong is used since the strong interaction is the "strongest" of the four fundamental forces; its strength is 100 times that of the electromagnetic force, and several orders of magnitude greater than that of the weak force and gravitation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_interaction
Dear Vidgametester: When an atom loses an electron it becomes an ion. Please gather your thoughts before replying. LC, Ph.D., Los Alamos National Laboratory. Los Alamos, New Mexico.
It becomes a charged particle known as an ion. It is usually more chemically reactive than the neutral atom.
You don't notice the Strong force in daily life because the force itself effectively operates in a very tiny region. The Strong force exerts an enormous attractive force at short distances of about 1 femtometer (roughly the size of a typical nucleus), which quickly becomes very weak even at molecular distances. The Strong force also becomes repulsive at very short distances much smaller than 1 femtometer, so it tends to stabilize atomic structures rather than allowing them to collapse inwards or explode outwards right away. If you're wondering why the Strong force operates this way, I'll simply answer that it's very complicated, and involves "virtual" gluons constantly popping out of the vacuum and interacting with the nucleus in a way that simply can't be understood through classical intuition and reasoning.
