1. The Professional Development Service for Teachers is funded by the Department of Education and Skills under the National Development Plan PARTICLE Physics An overview M.C.

2. PDST Resources for Leaving Certificate Physics 2 Consider the scene...  If I were to ask you what is water made of what would you say? Molecules of hydrogen and oxygen.  What are the hydrogen and oxygen made of? Protons neutrons and electrons.  What are the protons neutrons and electrons made of? ….This is what particle physics aims to find out.

3. PDST Resources for Leaving Certificate Physics 3 Particle Physics  What is Particle Physics all about? Let’s be more specific!  It is a study of the most basic building blocks of matter and the forces that act upon them.  We want to understand how these basic building blocks interact to make the universe look and behave the way it does.  To do this, you need to think……. BIG

4. PDST Resources for Leaving Certificate Physics 4 Requirements?  What do we need to study particle physics?  We need the fastest computers  The coldest temperatures  and the strongest magnets on the planet!

5. PDST Resources for Leaving Certificate Physics 5 How do we do particle physics?  We take a particle we can easily reproduce, such as a proton, and we accelerate it around and around in a circle faster and faster until it almost reaches the speed of light... and then we smash them together and see what happens!

6. PDST Resources for Leaving Certificate Physics 6 What do we know so far?  We have a body of knowledge called the standard model it says that all matter is made up of 12 fundamental particles (6 quarks and 6 leptons) acted on by three of the four forces of nature –the strong force, –the weak force and –the electromagnetic force.

7. PDST Resources for Leaving Certificate Physics 7 Problems with the standard model  Are there any problems with the standard model?  Yes, loads of problems. Gravity is not part of the standard model, although it is the best known of all the fundamental forces.  The model also predicts the existence of a special particle called a Higgs Boson that gives other particles their mass. We haven't been able to find or infer the presence of the Higgs Boson to date.

8. PDST Resources for Leaving Certificate Physics 8 Fundamental forces How do the fundamental forces work?  The weak, strong and electromagnetic forces result from the exchange of force carrier particles called Bosons.  We believe the force carrier particle for gravity is the graviton but we haven’t found it yet.

9. PDST Resources for Leaving Certificate Physics 9 Other big questions  Apart from looking for fundamental particles what other big questions does Particle Physics try to answer? –Where is all the anti-matter? –If regular matter makes up only 4% of the universe what exactly is the other 96% made of?

10. PDST Resources for Leaving Certificate Physics 10 Where is all the Anti Matter?  At the time of the Big Bang equal amounts of matter and anti matter were created so for all of the matter in the universe there should be an equal amount of anti matter.  We do not know where this anti matter is!

11. PDST Resources for Leaving Certificate Physics 11 Anti matter...  We do know that when matter meets anti matter pure energy is created and all the matter is annihilated. The natural world seems to have a preference for matter over antimatter; we need to find out why. Could there be an antimatter galaxy out there?  Maybe an anti matter galaxy and our galaxy could collide!

12. PDST Resources for Leaving Certificate Physics 12 Dark Energy and Dark Matter  Believe it or not we think that all the matter in the universe is only 4% of the total universe, 70% is dark energy and 26% is dark matter.  We cannot see dark matter but we can infer its presence from its gravitational effect on galaxies and light.  Dark energy is responsible for the universe expanding at ever increasing rates. We need to find out the exact nature of dark energy and matter to truly understand the nature of the universe

13. PDST Resources for Leaving Certificate Physics 13 What is the Large Hadron Collider?  It is the latest accelerator built at CERN it is the biggest and most powerful accelerator ever built, it will smash hadrons which are heavier particles like protons and lead ions together.CERN  They will look for the Higgs boson and try to recreate the conditions at the time of the big bang.  They will also try and look for clues as to where the anti matter is gone and look for special particles that might explain the nature of dark energy and matter.

14. PDST Resources for Leaving Certificate Physics 14 LHC

15. PDST Resources for Leaving Certificate Physics 15 Impressive? So what’s so impressive about this Large Hadron Collider?  It is the world’s biggest machine.  It has the world’s largest fridge.  It has the emptiest space in the Solar System, a vacuum tens times less than the vacuum on the moon.  It cools its magnets down to 1.9 K or –271.3 degrees Celsius.  It can monitor 600 million collisions per second.

16. PDST Resources for Leaving Certificate Physics 16 Particle Physics is  Fundamental and  Fascinating!