Working Group
Explaining Particle Physics to the Public
IPPOG forum members regularly discuss how to explain complex particle physics topics to the public. This specific working group took up the challenge to extract, from a long tradition, a wide range of working documents and even more ideas, the following stories:
More are expected by the end of 2024, and will be grouped in : a specific resource page
Convener
Working Group members
IPPOG forum contributors: Barbora Bruant Gulejova (Switzerland), Farid Ould-Saada (Norway), Hans Peter Beck (Switzerland), Michael Kobel (Germany), Ivan Melo (Slovakia), Thomas Naumann (DESY), Alberto Ruiz (Spain), Jonas Strandberg (Sweden), Jonivar Skullerud (Ireland).
External contributors: TBD
Mandate
The highlights of the discussions in past years include how to explain best the Higgs mechanism, spin, particle-wave duality, or gravitational waves; how to communicate the importance of precision, and “What if no new discovery / Higgs – what now?”. The WG also dived into deep questions on ethics, beauty as a criterion of truth in science, or what means theory in science and what it means in the broad public at large, how to sell a new European Strategy for Particle Physics and how to justify the costs of always-bigger machines (HL-LHC, LC, FCC).
