What do Particle Physicists do?
Mr. Blusk, Hello, I am an aspiring physicst who is currently attending high school. My English teacher has given us a term paper to do. Would you tell me what your job consists of? Thank you, Robert Dean Hi Robert, Well, I could go on for a long time on what we do. Let me be brief. Our goals as particle physicists are to understand nature at its most fundamental level. That it, we seek to identify and understand the most fundamental constituents of matter. Nowadays, these are the quarks and leptons, although it is certainly plausible that they are not fundamental. All w can say is that their size is less than 10-18 meters. Our second goal is to understand how the fundamental particles interact with one another. Today, we know of four forces (from weakest to strongest): Gravity, Weak force, Electromagnetic force, and the Strong Force. There is some hope that with a more complete theory, these four forces may be in fact different manifestations of the same fundamental force (so called “U