Information for schools and the general public
Useful Websites for Schools (and others!)
Here are some interesting websites, mainly
about particle physics.
Introductions to Particle Physics
Major Particle Physics Labs and Detectors
Related Topics
Other interesting sites
"Hands on" Particle Physics
The lists are by no means exhaustive, but are the
result of some knowledge coupled with occasional "surfing". They all display
properly with the latest version of Netscape running on a PC, but other than
that there are no guarantees that they will download properly.
The level of knowledge required varies from site to
site. While some are aimed at the real beginner, others are more suitable for
those who have already studied some particle physics. Constructive comments will
be gratefully received!
Gerald Myatt (University of Oxford)
email: g.myatt1@physics.ox.ac.uk
Introductions to Particle Physics
Particle Physics UK
http://www.particlephysics.ac.uk
The starting place to give the web surfer access to various
particle physics sites. Look here, for example, for the UK universities that
work in particle physics, which experiments they work on - and who can give
talks on particle physics. Also featuring regular news items, "what's on" in
particle physics, and a growing library of images under "Picture of the
Week".
Big Bang Science
http://hepwww.rl.ac.uk/pub/bigbang/part1.html
PPARC's booklet introducing particle physics, especially at
CERN and its Large Electron Positron collider (LEP).
The Particle Adventure
http://durpdg.dur.ac.uk/lbl/particleadventure/
Learn about basic particle physics
in an interactive "Particle Adventure", a web-site from the Contemporary Physics
Education Project (CPEP), which is mirrored in Durham. See
http://durpdg.dur.ac.uk/lbl/particleadventure/other/education/
for classroom activities and
http://www.cpepweb.org/ for more information about the CPEP. Also links to sites (not mirrored) about Plasma
Physics and Fusion and about Nuclear Science.
SLAC Virtual Visitor Center
http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/vvc/
An excellent site from the Stanford Linear Accelerator
Center in California, home to the 2-mile long linear electron accelerator. There
is a lot of good information here.
All about neutrinos
http://wwwlapp.in2p3.fr/neutrinos/aneut.html
An informative guide to the
history of neutrinos and the various puzzles surrounding them.
High-energy physics made painless
http://www-ed.fnal.gov/painless/htmls/index.html
Articles from Ferminews - the
newsletter of Fermilab - which aim to explain ideas in particle physics in
everyday language.
Of interest to schools ....
http://www.hep.ph.rhbnc.ac.uk/hep/schools/schools.html
Goodies about particle physics, including a "slide show"
introduction to particle physics.
"Hands on" Particle Physics
Events in DELPHI
http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/Documents/ParticleDemos/DelphiIntro/index.html
An introduction to interpreting events in one of the four LEP
detectors at CERN. If you can run Java you can also try rotating and zooming
events at
http://hepwww.rl.ac.uk/WIRED/
.
Hands on CERN
http://hands-on-cern.physto.se/
face="Times New Roman">
>For those with Java, the
chance to rotate and zoom real events from the DELPHI detector. Click on the
event display, read the instructions and select the detector components. Useful
in conjunction with the above two sites.
Identifying events at LEP
http://hepwww.ph.man.ac.uk/~wyatt/events/
A self-guided tutorial aimed at sixth-formers which
explains how to understand event pictures from the OPAL detector at LEP,
together with a five-part challenge (with the answers!).
Making top quark data accessible
...
http://www-ed.fnal.gov/samplers/hsphys/activities/top_quark_intro.html
Use conservation of momentum to calculate
the mass of the top quark, complete with pages for students and pages for
teachers.
Seeing particles
http://www.ep.ph.bham.ac.uk/user/watkins/seeweb/BubbleChamber.htm
>Exercises aimed
at schools, based on the interpretation of photographs of particle tracks in
bubble chambers.
Major Particle
Physics Labs and Detectors
CERN - Europe's main centre for particle
physics
http://www.cern.ch/Public/
Home of particle physics in Europe and the invention of the World Wide
Web. The site includes general information about particle physics, links to
experiments, and some information for teachers at
http://microcosm.web.cern.ch/Microcosm/teachers/home
. Also keep a look out for up-coming webcasts, and take a look
at the antimatter site,
http://livefromcern.web.cern.ch/livefromcern/antimatter/
Welcome to the DELPHI experiment
http://www.cern.ch/Delphi/Welcome.html
More detailed information on the DELPHI detector, with some good
event pictures for the more advanced student (under "About DELPHI - DELPHI
transparencies").
The OPAL detector
http://www.cern.ch/Opal/tour/detector.html
More detailed information about OPAL - for the seriously
interested. There is also good tutorial on typical events in OPAL, with pictures
(in both GIF and Postscript formats) - again for the keener enthusiast - at
http://www.cern.ch/Opal/events/opalpics.html
.
Learning physics from ALEPH
events
http://aleph.web.cern.ch/aleph/educ/Welcome.html
More detailed information about one of the four LEP
detectors at CERN, and events therein, for the more advanced student. Needs a
Postscript viewer to view events. However you can find events in GIF format at
http://aleph.web.cern.ch/aleph/dali/
.
The ATLAS detector
http://atlasinfo.cern.ch:80/Atlas/Welcome.html
The biggest of the detectors being built
for CERN's next accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This links to
Public pages on a server in the US.
The CMS detector
http://cmsinfo.cern.ch/Welcome.html
The smaller "general purpose detector"
being buit for LHC. ("C" is for compact!).
The LHCb detector
http://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/lhcb-public/
The experiment at the LHC that may help
us understand why we aren't made from antimatter.
DESY laboratory, Hamburg
http://www.desy.de/html/home/fastnavigator.html
The home of HERA, the world’s only electron-proton collider.
The links on this page take you mainly to sites in English, but the navigation
bar at the top at present takes you to German pages.
The H1 experiment at HERA
http://www-h1.desy.de/
An
introduction to one of the major experiments on the HERA collider at DESY,
including a "tour" and event displays.
The ZEUS experiment at
HERA
http://www-zeus.desy.de/
The second of the two major experiments investigating electron-proton
collisions at DESY. There are some interesting attempts to explain the physics
behind the published papers at
http://www-zeus.desy.de/zeus_papers/paper_summary/
BaBar and the Missing Antimatter
http://hepwww.rl.ac.uk/BaBarpub/
An introduction to the BaBar experiment and its search for
subtle differences beteen matter and antimatter. A teaching package on special
relativity and its application to events in BaBar can be found at
http://freespace.virgin.net/j.allnutt/mphys2/babarteach/intro.html
.
Physics at Fermilab
http://www.fnal.gov/pub/inquiring/physics/index.html
An introduction to aspects of particle physics from
Fermilab in the US.
Gran Sasso
http://www.lngs.infn.it/
Particle physics underground, without accelerators, at an
international laboratory in Italy, under the Gran Sasso Massif.
Sudbury Neutrino Observatory
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/
This laboratory is deep underground in Canada and houses
the SNO apparatus designed to detect neutrinos from the Sun.
Neutrino experiments
http://hepunx.rl.ac.uk/neutrino-industry/
A starting point for anyone who wants to
know about the wide variety of experiments with neutrinos
Related
topics
The Official String Theory
Website
http://www.superstringtheory.com/
So what is string theory? Find out at this excellent site
by the physicist-wife of one of the pioneers of string theory.
Dark matter tutorial
http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~dursi/dm-tutorial/dm0.html
A valuable dark matter tutorial, with interactive simulations
for those who can run with Java.
COSMOS - National Cosmology
Supercomputer
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public
This gives access to an excellent introduction to cosmology,
set up by cosmologists at Cambridge. With good illustrations.
The Brilliance of
X-rays
http://www.cclrc.ac.uk/Activity/ACTIVITY=Brilliance
How synchrotron radiation is produced and
used at the UK's Daresbury Laboratory.
About ISIS
http://www.isis.rl.ac.uk/aboutIsis/index.htm
An introduction to the world's
"brightest" pulsed neutron and muon source at the UK's Rutherford Appleton
Laboratory.
Microworlds
http://www.lbl.gov/MicroWorlds/
An interactive tour of materials research at the Advanced Light
Source at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California, with the opportunity
to acquire a poster!
Other
interesting sites
Astronomy Picture of the Day
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
A
different picture each day, with a brief explanation.
The Electronic Nobel
Museum
http://www.nobel.se/
All about all the Nobel prizes, from 1901 to the
present day, including videos of the Nobel lectures for the most recent
awards.
