IRB #4 The Particle Odyssey (Christine Sutton, Michael Marten, and Frank Close)

This summer I was accepted into a program at UPenn for research in high energy particle physics. When they described what I will be doing, I understood almost none of the words and figure I need to properly educate myself. The program, called QuarkNet, will be sending me a textbook called The Particle Odyssey. The authors are four scientists deeply involved in physics research. Frank Close and Christine Sutton are particle physicists at Oxford and Michael Martin is the founder of the Science Photo Library. With the Photo Library backing, the textbook incorporates hundreds of images that can effectively display experimental results and the rather abstract subject matter. The textbook starts with the basics, describing the structure of the average atom and grounding the reader with some of the more common physics concepts, like the Big Bang. But then it goes into cosmic radiation and subatomic particles like muons (which I will be detecting), eventually ending with the modern discussion about the legitimacy of the standard model. From this textbook, I hope to gain a better fundamental understanding of the research I'll be conducting this summer and its application to modern advances in physics.