Introducing Particle Physics
A Graphic Guide
Published on 5. June 2014
192 pages
978-1-84831-764-2 (ISBN)
Description
What really happens at the most fundamental levels of nature?
Introducing Particle Physics explores the very frontiers of our knowledge, even showing how particle physicists are now using theory and experiment to probe our very concept of what is real.
From the earliest history of the atomic theory through to supersymmetry, micro-black holes, dark matter, the Higgs boson, and the possibly mythical graviton, practising physicist and CERN contributor Tom Whyntie gives us a mind-expanding tour of cutting-edge science.
Featuring brilliant illustrations from Oliver Pugh, Introducing Particle Physics is a unique tour through the most astonishing and challenging science being undertaken today.
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Persons
Tom Whyntie is currently based at CERN working on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, a 12,500 tonne, cathedral-sized 'digital camera' one hundred metres under the ground. Tom has received awards from the Institute of Physics for his lecturing, performing in locations as varied as Cambridge, London, Portsmouth, Dublin, Enfield and Romania and has written for the Guardian. Oliver Pugh's most recent book was Introducing Infinity.
Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- What are we made of?
- Philosophy: mind and matter
- Metaphysics
- Empiricism
- Experimental philosophy
- Figuring out the code
- The first atomist
- The modern atomic theory
- Problems with the theory
- Some light entertainment
- The conundrum of waves
- The luminiferous aether
- Cathode rays
- A new form of light?
- The Electron
- Thomson's proof
- X-rays and radioactivity
- Enter Rutherford
- Using alpha particles as tools
- The nuclear model
- A light distraction: the photon
- Maxwell again
- Inside the nucleus
- The proton
- The neutron
- The final picture?
- The discovery of cosmic rays
- Something in the air
- An extraterrestrial source?
- The cloud chamber
- Tracking the cosmic rays
- Quantum field theory
- Dirac's amazing equation
- Antimatter
- Quantum electrodynamics
- QED under threat
- Mesons
- Pions and muons
- The dawn of the age of accelerators
- The Cyclotron and Synchrocyclotron
- The Synchrotron
- Cosmotron, Bevatron and G-Stack
- Strange times
- The particle zoo
- The neutrino
- The weak force
- Parity
- The Standard Model
- Quarks
- Up, down, strange and charm
- Charge-parity
- Bottom and top quarks
- The strong force and QCD
- Gluons
- Confinement
- Asymptotic freedom
- The leptons
- Completing the lepton family
- Out of the zoo and into the pet shop
- Electroweak unification
- A new boson needed
- Separated at birth
- The two-beam collider
- CERN's LEP collider: a crowning achievement
- The missing piece
- The problem of mass
- The joys of symmetry
- The Higgs mechanism
- Wanted: a massive, spin-zero boson
- The Higgs field
- The US strikes back
- The Large Hadron Collider
- Tension at CERN
- A new frontier
- Two big challenges
- Improvements in particle detectors
- The arrival of computers
- Information management: the internet and the Grid
- The great switch-on
- Another challenge from the US
- Unfinished Higgsness
- Supersymmetry and dark matter
- The graviton
- Gravity, extra dimensions and (micro-) black holes
- The solar neutrino problem
- The journey continues
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Index
