The Casimir Effect
The Casimir effectgives rise to a force between close parallel uncharged conducting plates and arises from quantum vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field.
According to the quantum theory, the vacuum contains virtual particles which are in a continuous state of fluctuation. Casimir realised that between two plates, only those virtual photons whose wavelengths fit a whole number of times into the gap should be counted when calculating the vacuum energy.
The energy density decreases as the plates are moved closer, which implies that there is a small force drawing them together.
The attractive Casimir force between two plates of area
separated by a distance
can be calculated to be,
where
is Planck's constant and
is the speed of light.
Sinceis in the denominator, the biggergets, the smaller the force will be; and because the force goes as the fourth power of
the force decreases rapidly with increasing
Suppose
and 
