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

Conveners

Thomas Naumann

Thomas Naumann

Barbora Bruant Gulejova

Barbora Bruant Gulejova

Working Group members

IPPOG forum contributors: Farid Ould-Saada (Norway), Hans Peter Beck (Switzerland), Michael Kobel (Germany), Ivan Melo (Slovakia), Alberto Ruiz (Spain), Jonas Strandberg (Sweden), Jonivar Skullerud (Ireland), Pedro Abreu (Portugal).

 

External contributors:

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).