Online Resources

Accelerator Resources

Event Collider. Simulation of particles in detectors. You change energy and magnetic field. Events reflect actual percentages of type.

Particle Accelerator. Flip batteries to accelerate a charged particle in a simple demo.

Particle Adventure is an interactive tutorial on particles, accelerators, detectors, etc.

World of Beams. Tutorial about basic concepts about accelerators.

Detector Resources

Acronyms of High-Energy Physics from Fermilab.

Educational pages for theATLAS and CMS experiments. Both show artists' sketches of the detectors and some descriptions of how different particles are detected. Also, check out the brochure pages for CMS.

Lifetime of Muon. This is more technical than you will probably want, except it does explain the basics of detectors. Look at the third section, Interactions between Charged Particles and Matter, and the next section on Scintillators.

Links to many particle physics sites.

Magnetic Effects on Particle Beams in TV.

Make a Cloud Chamber. Includes troubleshooting. First evidence of antimatter found in a cloud chamber.

Nice descriptions of parts of the OPAL detector, which was at CERN.

Particle Detector BriefBook. Encyclopedic form of all words associated with particle physics. Also published as book.

Photomultiplier Tube Tutorial. This is by a QuarkNet teacher from the summer 1999. It goes through the multiplication effect in PMTs.

Tracking Unseen Particles with iron filings.

Accelerator and Detector Resources

CERN has information about accelerators and describes many of its detector experiments

Charged particle. Shows the motion of a charged particle in an electromagnetic field. By Fu-Kwun Hwang.

Fermilab Tour. It has some photos of the accelerators and detectors, but little explanation.

Fun@learning.physics. Free sample applets: charged particles in electric and magnetic fields.

Particle Data Book gives the specifications for accelerators and detectors.

Searching for the Building Blocks of Matter. Two sections, "Top: Accelerators" and "Top: Experiments", discuss both accelerators and detectors.

SLAC's Virtual Visitor Center describes how some accelerators and detectors work.

Use OnScreen Particle Physics software to experiment with particles and magnetic fields. Information about it is available at onscreen-sci.com.

Energy-Momentum Relationship Resources

A Look at "psi -> rho pi." A posting at CalTech: This is obviously a "note" for a research team, but it shows some nice mass plots and provides text for the adventurous!

Does Mass Change with Velocity?
This is a thorough but dry discussion of the mass-velocity relationship from the Usenet Relativity FAQ.

Einstein on E = mc²
Einstein explains the famous equation in his own words.

Energy-Momentum Formula
Continued notes from Physics 252. This gives a form of the relationship between E, P, and M (though not exactly the way a particle physicist would normally write it) as well as general arguments for it.

Mass and Energy
These are the notes from the "Mass and Energy" lecture of Physics 252 at the University of Virginia by Dr. Michael Fowler. They describe how mass and energy are related in relativity and work out some of the mathematics.

Pennies! An application of mass reconstruction to everyday items.

Relativistic Lifetimes Resources

Cosmic Rays
If you would like to learn more about cosmic rays in general, this is a good place to start.

Lifetime of the Muon
You will find this Website to be somewhat technical, but it explains cosmic ray muon lifetimes thoroughly. CalTech produced this site, automatically giving it an enviably high geek factor.

Relativity: What Time Is It?
This is a very thorough set of lecture notes from Physics 109 at the University of Virginia. It covers time dilation and its effects on cosmic ray muon decay. Following the "next lecture" links will yield further extensive notes on relativity.

Standard Model Resources

The Higgs Boson
So particles have mass. Where does mass come from? The Higgs mechanism, which physicists hope to confirm and study in Run II of the Tevatron or Run I of the LHC, is thought to be the answer.

Neutrino Mass
There is recent evidence that neutrinos have mass. Read about it here.

The Official String Theory Website
String theory is perhaps the most promising theoretical framework we have for understanding why matter behaves as it does. Find out more about it here.

The Particle Adventure
If you haven't yet gone through this Website, get to it! It is probably the single best Website for learning the basics of particle physics. It gives a simple, thorough explanation of the Standard Model.

Searching for the Building Blocks of Matter
This Fermilab site gives a good overview of how the work of experimental particle physicists put the Standard Model together, piece by piece.

What's a Neutrino?
This site posted by UC Irvine gives an excellent explanation of what neutrinos are and a brief history of neutrino physics from Pauli's original hypothesis in 1931 to the present.