Where's Higgs?
A tutorial on the road to discovery
Divide into 3 groups and try to answer the questions in this activity.
Foundation Question for all 3 groups:
- Why did theorist Peter Higgs and his colleagues propose this new boson?
Group questions:
- What are the Higgs field and the Higgs boson?
- What were some of the pre-LHC efforts to discover the Higgs boson?
- How was the Higgs finally discovered?
Document Resources:
Some of these resources are at a professional level. Please focus on what you learn and understand from them rather than on parts that are too technical or abstract. Of course, you are encouraged to ask questions.
- Wikipedia, Higgs Mechanism - Theoretical Issues - Theoretical need for the Higgs and Simple explanation of the theory, from its origins in superconductivity
- CERN, A Phenomenological Profile of the Higgs Boson, Ellis, Gaillard, and Nanopoulos, 30 October 1975
- CERN Courier, LEP pursues Higgs boson and greater W precision, 2 November 1999
- CERN Courier, LEP hints at Higgs effect, 21 September 2000
- CERN Bulletin, Higgs10: The dramatic last year of CERN’s flagship LEP collider, 9 June 2022
- Physikalisches Institut, Heidelberg, Searches for Higgs Bosons, October 2005
- Fermilab Inquiring Minds (Q&A), April 2014 - How does the Higgs boson generate the masses for all other particles? Is it the carrier of a force?
- Fermilab News, Tevatron Experiments Double-Team Higgs Boson, 4 August 2008
- Physics Letters B, Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC, 17 September 2012
- Physics Letters B, Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at
the LHC, 17 September 2012 - Scholarpedia, The Higgs Boson Discovery
Video Resources:
- Don Lincoln, What is a Higgs Boson?, 7 July 2011
- Link TV, The Moment: CERN Scientist Announces Higgs Boson 'God Particle' Discovery, 4 July 2012
- Muon Ray, Higgs Boson Discovery announcement by Peter Higgs, 4 July 2012
- Minute Physics, The Higgs Boson, Part I, 5 July 2012
- PHD Comics, The Higgs Boson Explained, 30 July 2012
- Don Lincoln, Higgs Boson 2016, 16 November 2016