The Standard Model of particle physics is one of the most successful theories in physics and describes the fundamental interactions between elementary particles. It is encoded in a compact description, the so-called 'Lagrangian', which even fits on t-shirts and coffee mugs. This mathematical formulation, however, is complex and only rarely makes it into the physics classroom.

Particle builder is a particle physics board game developed by Lachlan McGinness, HarriLeinonen and Rowan McGinness. The game is designed to familiarise students (aged 16-18 years) in groups of 2-3 players with the elementary particles in the standard model. The game involves playing cards which represent elementary particles and comparing the properties of these elementary particles. The game has different stages or levels. Beginning players should start on level 1 and as they become more familiar with the particles they can progress through the levels.

Scattering experiments (e.g. the gold foil experiment) are important research tools of nuclear and particle physics. They help us to study interactions between particles and to obtain information about the structure of matter. Below, we present activities using a mechanical 3D-printable scattering experiment. The activities include different difficulty levels, in which high-school students can study scattering qualitatively, semi-quantitatively or quantitatively.

This talk raises and addresses the question of why humans perform fundamental research, by noting the fundamental questions our species (and perhaps other species) have raised thrughout time. It then gives a snap history of how we have gone about trying to address these questions from early telescopes and microscopes to LIGO and the LHC. It attempts to summarise our knowledge to this point (in a few slides), then poses the questions we are asking the LHC (and future) experiments to answer, including:

Dive into the fascinating world of bubble chambers and analyse tracks of high-energy particles with your students. We have developed several activities for advanced high-school students, in which they study bubble chamber photographs and try to work out for themselves what they show. You can find a student worksheet describing these activities (including solutions and additional information for teachers) below. Suggestions for educators Worksheet activity 1: How does a bubble chamber work? Students read a short text and learn about the different components of a bubble chamber.

Particles coming from the universe are crossing the earth all the time – they are harmless but invisible to us. Cloud Chambers are detectors which make the tracks of the particles visible. Some decades ago these detectors were used at CERN in the first particle physics experiments. The following instructions will help you to build your own Cloud Chamber at home. You will also find explanations on what you can see in the chamber and what the source for this particles is. In addition, we link to similar resources, give advice on radioactive sources (e.g.

The discovery of the Higgs boson came at the end of a long journey, where the direction was marked, but the road had to be built. What now? Now the physicists are looking out onto a world we don’t know, where there are no paths, and even the directions to be followed aren’t very clear. They know that something "new" has to exist, because only 5% of the matter in the Universe may be attributed to known physics.

This package contains a set of cards that can be used in physics lessons or Particle Physics Masterclasses to introduce, explain and repeat the different particles and their fundamntal properties.
One set consists of 61 Cards with 24 Cards of matter particles and antimatter particles respectively, 12 exchange particles and the Higgs boson. (availble in English and German). All strong interacting particles appear in the three different (anti) colors.

At CERN, some 10,000 physicists are investigating elementary particles that cannot be seen by the naked eye. The schoolchildren taking part in the project conduct investigations, just like the physicists, on sealed boxes containing unknown objects. To work out what's inside, they have to proceed through a series of hypotheses and experiments.

A short and clever video animation using cartoons and voice over. This can also be printed out as a comic book.

The PhD Comics team visit particle physicist David Whiteson at CERN where he talks to us about what the mysterious Higgs Boson is and how the Large Hadron Collider is going to find it (if it exists).
Duration: 7 min 44 sec