The Particle Odyssey: A Journey to the Heart of Matter

I've always been fascinated with the large and small extremes of physics and while on the cosmological scale there's a surplus of visually enchanting material there hasn't been as much when it comes to physics on the particle level. This book fills that demand. Tracking the advances made in particle physics over the last century, the book includes beatiful images illustrating what the scientists of the time saw and the equipment they used. All of this is clearly and simply explained. The difficulty level of the book increases as it progresses through each new discovery which is to be expected as the underlying physics and detection methods became more complex as well. Still, to someone with an interest in science and will to learn this is a great introduction to a mysterious world.

Can you imagine a coffee table picture book on particle physics? That's what this is, and it's beautiful. Particle physics began in the 1890's, when the early experiments of Thomson discovered the electron. Things moved slowly, the proton during the teens's. The newtron and several other particles in the 1930's. And that's basically where physics was when I got my physics degree more years ago than I like to remember. Then beginning in the late 1960's the world of particle physics exploded. There are more than three dozen known particles. New theories about the formation of the universe have come about. What happened at the big bang, what particles existed in the first few nanoseconds? The development of testing machines undreamed of not so many years ago have begun to answer some of these questions. The title of this book is well chosen. It has been an odyssey. To the outsider, not working in particle physics, it has been mysterious. Newly discovered particles with names like quark, newly discovered attributes like charm, color, and strange have made it impossible to keep abreast of the developments. Here in one easy to read, beautifully illustrated and rather short book is the whole story laid out in a way that conveys just what you want to know.

I want to write a review of this book because there are only two other reviews. A book of this quality deserves many reviews to encourage people to at least look at it. Particle physics is extremely abstruse, really only for physicistsand people who like knowledge for its own sake. Many particle physicists do the best they can to explain their subject in "English," but I don't think that laypeople (incl. myself) can really grasp the subject w/o going through the rigors of deriving its basics and knowing howto use its tools, like QED and QCD, etc. (and I don't!). So personally I may be moving away from studying the subject, butI'm very glad I came across "The Particle Odyssey." They say a picture tells a thousand words - truer words could be spoken as concerns the book. The reader (even the peruser) can learn an incredible amount at whatever level he/she is at, just by looking at the pictures and reading the concise descriptions. We see pictures of the founders of modern physics, their inventions, also great shots of particle accelerators and particle tracks, and much more. The book would make a superb coffee-table addition. It could entertain, even blow the minds of people who looked at it, maybe spark some interest in younger people, and as I said, anyone can learn something at the same time (perhaps unlike a familar coffee table favorite, "A Brief History of Time"!). The text is about as easy to read, given the complicated subject, as possible, thorough, and enjoyable. Together with the pictures, the authors cover the subject (and I do feel qualified to say this) morethan thoroughly. Anyone with even a passing interest in particle physics would doquite well to have this amazing, remarkable book.

The book is aimed at the intelligent layperson. It would be too basic for a physics professional or even for a physics graduate student. However, it is not basic. Anyone who is not seriously interested in particle physics will quickly bog down and find it boring. For those who are "seriously interested" it will most likely feed their interest. The book is thick with information, but is written in an accessible style. It is roughly 50% text and 50% photos (some full page, most quarter page or smaller), but this is not a coffee table book. The photos support the text and include captions that explain the photo (not merely summarize the text). Throughout the book, the photos demonstrate significant events (eg, Röntgen's first X-ray, the apparatus Chadwick used to discover the neutron, Anderson working with his cloud chamber, Lawrence's first cyclotron) or show portions of the large accelerators or detectors with descriptions of the components pictured.As the authors state "This book is the story of how a century of discovery and invention has brought us to our modern understanding of the subatomic particles and the nature of the material Universe." Four chapters (3, 5, 7, 9) provide "individual portraits of all the major particles" so far discovered. Chapter 3 covers the basic structure of the atom: electrons, protons, neutrons, and photons. Chapter 5 covers particles discovered in cosmic radiation: positrons, muons, pions, kaons, the lambda, the xi, and the sigma. Chapter 7 covers particles or phenomenon discovered in accelerators: the neutral pion, the neutral cascade, antimatter, resonance, omega-minus, neutrinos, and quarks. Chapter 9 covers the particles discovered in modern accelerators: charmed quarks, tau, bottom quarks, gluons, the W and Z particles, and top quarks. Chapters 2, 4, 6, and 8 describe the history of particle physics. Each of these history chapters introduces the people and the devices they used to make the discoveries described in the subsequent chapter. Two chapters (10, 11) "describe the questions that are aborbing particle physicists today" (eg, What is Mass?, Is there a theory of everything?, Issues in particle astromony). The final chapter (titled "Particles at Work") describes specific applications in society (eg, TVs, diagnostic scans)The book is as much about how the discoveries are made (ie, the physicists and their experimental apparatuses) as it is about particle physics itself. I read the book with almost no background in particle physics (having read just a few encyclopedia entries on the topic) and found most of the book to be accessible, though never an easy read (about the same reading difficulty as The Economist magazine: economist.com). However, chapter 7 was more difficult and chapter 9 was a difficult read for me (requiring re-reads of many sentences). My knowledge of particle physics is significantly enhanced having read this book and I now have a good appreciation of the accelerators

The reason I got into physics in the first place was the combined allure of subatomic strangeness and huge machines at the edge of technology and cleverness. This book distills those attractions in beautiful descriptions and stunning photography. If I ever needed reaffirmation in my choice to become a particle physicist, this book would surely do the trick.