• Question: What is particle physics?

    Asked by ItzDemonicGaming to Philip, Ali on 13 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by im daniel ill like feet.
    • Photo: Philip Ratcliffe

      Philip Ratcliffe answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      The study of the physics of particles, ha ha! Ok, don’t laugh!
      Serious now.
      Now, we’ve all played with Lego (at least in my day). You can build, say, a house with the small building blocks. Now, you look at that and you see a house, but you know it’s made of smaller pieces. What’s more, there aren’t that many differenet sorts of pieces (at least not in the first box you get for Christmas), but you can make lots and lots of different houses with them.
      We “look” at an atom and we see … an “atom”. There are lots of atoms (over 100), but they too are made of of smaller pieces: protons, neutrons and electrons – these are what we call particles and the science of the way they behave, interact, move, stick together, … is what we call “particle physics”.

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