CLASS 1: COLLIDERS

CERN Large Hadron Colliders, Geneva, Switzerland

PHYSICS CLASSROOM
TOPIC: COLLIDERS
Today, we'll learn of something very new to most of us; colliders. And we will try to be as brief and clear as we can.

Colliders are machines or laboratories used to study elementary particles(eg. Quarks) and sub atomic particles. Experiments relating to atomic particles(electrons, protons, etc) are carried out using colliders.

How do colliders work?
Colliders works by using accelerators to increase the speed of particles to high values of velocty(close to the speed of light), and making them collide against each other. The reactions that takes place after the collision are then studied and analysed, thanks to the experts. The result of the analysis tells us the nature of the elementary particles that existed during the collision since these particles cannot exist independently.

The collision may be between two particles, such that,
i)both are accelerated and moving towards each other, or
ii)one is kept stationary and the other is accelerated.

So many of you may ask, what is an accelerator?
Here is the answer.
Accelerators are used to speed up the movement of particles by taking advantage of the way the particle reacts to electrical and magnetic fields. Accelerators like this, uses electromagnetic fields to attract and direct the beams of particles in a vacuum. The open-end Anode and the X and Y plates in the cathode ray tube of your television is an example of this form of accelerators.

Another form of acceleration technology, uses oscillation. But this is not as efficient as the electromagnetic accelerators.

Superconductors and Large Accelerators.
Acceleration by electromagnetism in large practical cases, requires the use of special conductors known as super conductors. Superconductors conducts electricity with zero resistance, but the ones in operation now, works at close to zero temperatures. They are needed to build electromagnets which will not develop heat and at thesame time, generate the needed amount of high magnetic fields with the available current it can get.

An example of a collider, is the large hadron collider which was used to discover the god particle- higgs boson.
(More facts on that later)

Hope you all enjoyed the class? Any questions?

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