How much stronger is Electromagnetism compared to Gravity?

Question

I know that Electromagnetism is stronger than Gravity, but by how much?

Answer 1

Way stronger. Put an iron nail on a table and hold a magnet above it. The magnet has no trouble overcoming gravity. The little magnet easily overpowers all the gravitational force generated by the enormous earth sitting below the table!

Answer 2

Warning: I took a lot of physics in college, but it was not my major. I may not have the best answer.

The short answer is that Gravity is A LOT stronger. And by a lot I mean several orders of magnitude. Consider the fact that the power of a small magnet that holds up a paperclip is strong enough to overcome the gravitational pull of the entire planet Earth. The idea that a peice of metal only a few grams in weight can overpower 6x10^24 kilos of earth is really enough of an example to demonstrate just how puny gravity is. So a cheap answer is that it is at least 27 orders of magnitude stronger, but for reasons discussed below, this really isn't a good answer.

The complicated answer is that I don't know if its possible to quantify just how much stronger electromagnetism is. In the example given above, you might ask yourself, how powerful does the magnet have to be to hold up the paper clip? Magnets that are small in size can be powerful in force, and vice versa. Gravity is force that deals specifically with mass, but electromagnetism operates independently of mass. In fact, the Fine Structure constant (which measures electromagnetic interaction) is a unitless measurement while the Graviational constant is dependent upon mass, distance, and time. Without the units matching up, you can't compare the two constants to one another. A similar problem is that when you get into subatomic theory, nearly all forces have a particale associated with them. For example, the positron regulates electromagnetic forces and the meson regulates the strong nuclear force. Unfortunately, phsyics has yet to discover the theoritical "gravitron" which would govern the graviational force. So once again a basis by which we might compare the two forces is irreconcilable. So the bottom line becomes HOW do you define the term "stronger" and does that definition include a quantitative measurement? (As opposed to a qualitative one.) I am not aware of a methodical way by which two forces are comparable.

It wouldn't surprise me if somebody more knowledgeable came along with a better answer than this, but thats the best I've got.

Answer 3

Gravity and electric and magnetism are relative. One expresses the force between gross masses as being relative to Newton Unversal gravity constant.
The other expresses a force that is relative to Coulomb's constantof which a permeabity of space is derrived.
Hence because Coulomb forces deal with micromasses of high density , They are in much greater magnetude the forces betwen macromasses.
For expample the force between two protons at close proximity of 2 femtons would be in the order of 10^8 Newtons.
Whereas a 10 kilograms baby sitting on the surface of the earth would experience only a force of 98.1 Newtons.

Note; the earth is a vey large magnet and it takes Gravity pressure to Hold this large magnet together.