What is an intuitive way of understanding and describing the "Weak Nuclear Force"

[Achilles]

Or put it better by  a video I watched on you tube "the weak nuclear interaction" which still doesn't make me understand it fully. It is neither a push or pull force which makes it less intuitive but it is responsible for radioactive decay according to Wikipedia. Can someone please give me an intuitive definition of the weak nuclear force and its function.

Edited August 15, 2018 by Achilles

[StringJunky]

This is good:  https://www.livescience.com/49254-weak-force.html

I might be talking out of my backside, but it seems to be a mechanism to allow an unbalanced, massive atom, wrt excess protons or neutrons in it,  to convert one to the other, via changes in the quark configuration that makes up protons and neutrons,  to achieve a more stable nuclear configuration. Nuclear-wise, everything wants to be iron, so they try to decay to that. The range of the weak force is only ¹/10 the diameter of a proton.

Edited August 15, 2018 by StringJunky

[Strange]

Each type of force or interaction depends on a type of "charge" or property of the particles involved.

In the case of the electromagnetic force, that is the electric charge.

In the case of the strong force, it is the colour "charge" of quarks.

In the case of the weak nuclear force, it is the "flavour" of the quarks (up, down, top, bottom, strange, charm). As such it allows quarks to change flavour which is one of the causes of nuclear decay.

In all cases, the interaction is mediated by bosons: photons, gluons and W/Z bosons, respectively.

[Markus Hanke]

12 hours ago, Strange said:

In the case of the weak nuclear force, it is the "flavour" of the quarks

Actually, this is not correct. The charge that is associated with the weak interaction is a quantum number called “weak isospin”. All particles possess this, and it is conserved in all types of interactions - unlike flavour, which is carried only be quarks, and is not conserved anyway. Thus, the weak interaction concerns more (elementary) particles than just quarks.

13 hours ago, Achilles said:

Can someone please give me an intuitive definition of the weak nuclear force and its function.

To be honest, I don’t think there is an intuitive way to really understand the weak interaction. It’s really quite a complicated mechanism, and requires quite a bit of background knowledge in quantum field theory to fully understand.

[Strange]

46 minutes ago, Markus Hanke said:

Actually, this is not correct. The charge that is associated with the weak interaction is a quantum number called “weak isospin”.

Thank you. Annoyingly, I think I used to know that!

[Strange]

2 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

To be honest, I don’t think there is an intuitive way to really understand the weak interaction. It’s really quite a complicated mechanism, and requires quite a bit of background knowledge in quantum field theory to fully understand.

I think the best one could do (as a layman) is to understand the results (eg beta decay, etc)

[Eise]

I also found the weak interaction the most not-understandable interaction. 

What helped me a little is to look at interactions with the help of Feynman diagrams. As Feynman diagram, the weak interaction 'looks' quite similar to the other interactions (i.e. strong and electromagnetic forces). Maybe that helps you too? A good help in this respect was Martinus Veltman, Facts and Mysteries in Elementary Particle Physics. (If you buy it, be sure you buy the 'revised edition'. The book was extended because of the discovery of the Higgs Boson.)