Suzie Sheehy

The Standard Model of particle physics classifies all known particles in nature and the forces through which they interact. ...[O]ur current version came about in the 1970s. This theory is an absolute triumph: it is mathematically elegant and unbelievably precise, yet it fits on the side of a mug.

Over the last century the experiments... have gone from single-room setups led by one person to the largest machines on Earth. The era of "Big Science," which began in the 1950s... now... involve collaborations of over a hundred countries and tens of thousands of scientists. ...[N]o individual country can achieve these feats alone.

While a theoretical physicist's ideas must take into account the results of experiments, an experimental physicist has a more nuanced job. She is not simply testing out the ideas of theoretical physicists; she is asking her own questions and designing and physically building equipment she can use to test those ideas. ...[H]er practical knowledge ranges from to chemistry, from to .

The reason we can say today that we know all this stuff, that we think our theoretical models represent reality, is not because we have pretty mathematics but because we have done experiments.

Accelerator physicists constantly discover new ways of creating beams to help learn... about particle physics. ...[T]he nearest hospital almost certainly houses a particle accelerator. ...We build particle accelerators to study viruses, chocolate and ancient scrolls.

In this book, I will take you through twelve key experiments that marked... a discovery... we now see as essential to our understanding of the world... [T]hese experiments embody the spirit of enquiry that stems from human curiosity. ...[T]hey have changed our lives in almost every aspect, from computing to medicine, from energy to communications and from art to archaeology.

The Standard Model tells us that all the matter that makes up our everyday existence is composed of just three particles. ...[T]wo types of s called "up" and "down" which forms our s and s. These... with the electrons make up atoms, held together by forces: electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces.

Our view of the smallest constituents in nature has changed rapidly in the last 120 years... Some way into the twentieth century this work became known as "high-energy physics,"... Today the study of all the many particles and how they formed, behave and transform is simply called particle physics.

I suppose I was trying to figure out the meaning of my own existence. ...I went about it in a more indirect way: I set about trying to understand the entire Universe.

[E]xperiments take us to that frightening frontier of vulnerability: the real world.

Physics will always be, at its core, about understanding our place in the Universe...

Suddenly, nothing else mattered. I wanted to know... about gravity and particles and and relativity. About stars and atoms and light and energy. Above all, I wanted to know how it was all connected and how I was connected to it. ...[I]t mattered to me as a human ...if I managed it even a little bit, I'd not have wasted this little blip of time as a conscious being. I decided to become a physicist.