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Gaurav Happy Tiwari

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What is Particle Physics?

Particle physics is the study of Particles, from what everything is made of. In this section of Physics we study the fundamental particles that make up all of matter, and their mutual interaction.

Everything around us is made up of these particles, you may say, made up of fundamental building blocks of nature. So, what are these building blocks?

In the early ninteenth century, it was believed that atoms were fundamental; they were thought to be the smallest part of nature and were not made up of anything smaller.

After a sharp progress in Physics, experiments discovered that atoms were not fundamental at all, but were made up of two components:
• Positively charged nucleus
• Negatively charged electrons, surrounding the nucleus.

Then the nucleus was probed to see if it was fundamental, but it too was discovered to be made up of something smaller; positive protons and neutral neutrons bound together with the cloud of electrons still surrounding it.

Now that these protons and neutrons were found, it was time to see if they were fundamental. It was discovered that they were made up of smaller particles called “quarks”, which today are believed to be truly fundamental, along with electrons. Furthermore, electrons belong to a family of fundamental particles, which are called “leptons“. Quarks and leptons, along with the forces that allow them to interact, are arranged in a nice neat theory named The Standard Model

I shall be back soon with second part with much more illustrations & with more resources.

Related Articles

• Bad News For Particle Physics (in the United States) (lockergnome.com)
• The Horror of the Higgs (scienceblogs.com)