CERN

AP Physics C Particles Project Wiki Page for [CERN]

So here is something entirely irrelevant.

Warning! Copyright infringement below -- this pic taken at FermiLab!
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature. The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions. Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 20 Member States.

Team members

• Melissa D.
• Brenden D-S.
• Emily "Embolism" Foxhall
• Amanda H.
• Neeraj S.
• David T.

Task list

1. Homework reading assignments
   1. Particle Adventure Readings:
      1. What is fundamental
      2. What is the world made of
      3. What holds it together
      4. How do we know any of this?
      5. How do we experiment with tiny particles?
      6. Any other parts you find interesting
   2. Basic experiments
   3. Particle Fireworks
      1. Table of Elementary Particles
      2. Generations of Elementary Particles
      3. Play with elementary particles
2. Homework questions
3. Notes from the lab at CERN
4. Presentations
5. Labs
   1. Radioactive decay Save this file to your local computer and run it from there, not from network! See lab writeup for details.
   2. Bubble chamber with tracks: Follow instructions at Bubble Chamber
   3. Collisions in 3D with the BaBar detector If you need to refer to the relativity material, work through all pages. If you want to skip this review, click ‘Display Index’ in the upper right corner of the screen and start with ‘Why bother with particle physics?’ Be sure you look at the detector display from a variety of angles and zooms and vary the magnetic field. Observe the effect of the field on each type of particle. Continue until you have found the K₀ lifetime and worked at least 5 event pictures from the 25 listed. Then complete the histogram activity.
   4. OnScreen Particle Physics
6. Group Projects
   1. Z Boson mass
   2. Cosmic rays

Experiments

Cern - Experiments

Resources

The Nobel Prize website is a valuable historical reference (probably because lots of the people who did this work won them). For a detailed look at high energy experiments, see FermiLab's exhibit . General information and links are on the course website, . Books (yes, actual books) are on reserve for your use in the SJS library. See especially .

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