Particle Accelerators, Colliders, and the Story of High Energy Physics: Charming the Cosmic Snake [Hardcover]

This book takes the readers through the science behind particle accelerators, colliders and detectors: the physics principles that each stage of the development of particle accelerators helped to reveal, and the particles they helped to discover. The book culminates with a description of the Large Hadron Collider, one of the worlds largest and most complex machines operating in a 27-km circumference tunnel near Geneva. 

The book provides the material honestly without misrepresenting the science for the sake of excitement or glossing over difficult notions. The principles behind each type of accelerator is made accessible to the undergraduate student and even to a lay reader with cartoons, illustrations and metaphors. Simultaneously, the book also caters to different levels of readers background and provides additional materials for the more interested or diligent reader.

The Expanding Universe of Particles.- The spark that broke the atom.- Natures own accelerator.- Cracking the Nucleus.- The Spiral Path to Nirvana.- Then it rained particles.- Rings of Earth- The Synchrotron.- The Next Generation  Supersynchrotrons.- Linear Accelerators, the straight story.- The Lotus Posture, Symmetry, Gauge Theories and the Standard Model.- Collision course.- Particle Detector Experiments.- The Snake Charmer- The Large Hadron Collider.- Index.

From the reviews:

Jayakumar, an experienced accelerator scientist, tells the story of scientists growing understanding of high-energy particles through the lens of the accelerators and colliders built to explore the diverse phenomena of high-energy physics. & The author writes lucidly, often revealing his passion for both the giant accelerators and the scientists mission to explore the world at the highest energies achievable. & Summing Up: Recommended. All general readers and undergraduate students. (J. R. Burciaga, lj