Discuss “How Things Work: Particle Accelerators”

Physics is pretty complicated stuff. So complicated, in fact, that physicists often have to resort to violent tactics in order to probe the subatomic universe: they smash atoms. Doing physics with an atom smasher is a little bit like dropping a monitor off the eighth floor stairwell of Wean Hall and trying to figure out how it works from the little pieces of glass, wire and circuit-board left over. But the atoms go a lot faster, there are a lot more pieces at the end, and above all, it costs a lot more tax money.

Atom smashers, more accurately known as particle accelerators, boost charged particles like electrons and positrons or heavy ions and their anti-particles to almost the speed of light and then heave them into one another. If they...