Elementary particle physics is the study of the universe at the smallest distance scale possible. It addresses questions such as:

• What are the fundamental building blocks of the universe?
• How do these fundamental constituents interact with each other?
• Why is the mass of the Higgs boson unnaturally small?
• What is the physics beyond the current theory of particle physics?
• Is there a limiting smallest distance scale to the universe?
• How can we integrate quantum mechanics and gravity?
• Why is there much more matter in the universe than anti-matter?

In the sessions on elementary particles physics, you will have the opportunities to see how physicists go about addressing some of these issues. You will use event displays to analyze events produced in collision of high energy protons at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.

The LHC is the world's highest energy accelerator. Ten years ago, physicists working at the LHC made the major discovery of the Higgs boson, the particle associated with the mechanism that gives mass to the fundamental particles. The LHC is continuing to push the frontier by exploring the possible existence of physics beyond what is currently known.

Working with fellow students, you will search for particle muons, Z bosons, bound states of quarks and antiquarks, and maybe even Higgs bosons in the LHC data. In the process, you'll learn about the analysis tools that physicists use to separate out signal from the background in the LHC data.