The Matter of Everything How Curiosity, Physics, and Improbable Experiments Changed the World

An accelerator physicist's fascinating journey through the experiments that uncovered the nature of matter and made the modern world.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, many scientists believed that the project of physics was nearly complete, that there was little left to explore. But as the new century dawned, scientists with the drive to deepen their understanding began looking ever more closely at the atom, and as a result of their remarkable discoveries, physics—and the world around us—would never again be the same.
 
When the cathode ray tube revealed the secret of X-rays, physics immediately proved itself to be a source of enormous technological innovation, enabling life-saving medical equipment, safer building construction, and stronger security measures. And with every discovery since, our expanded knowledge of the infinitesimal has also brought a corresponding change in technology. These experiments ushered us into the modern world, helping us to create detectors that map the insides of volcanoes and predict eruptions as well as photovoltaic cells that power remote controls, accelerate our Internet speeds, and harness the sun’s energy. From the smallest of instruments to machines so large they straddle international borders, Suzie Sheehy takes readers on a captivating journey through twelve crucial experiments that shaped our understanding of the cosmos and how we live within it.
 
Along the way, Sheehy pulls back the curtain to reveal how physics is really done—not by theorists with blackboards, but by experimentalists with brilliant designs. Celebrating human ingenuity, creativity, and above all curiosity, The Matter of Everything is an inspiring story about the scientists who make real discoveries, and a powerful reminder that progress is a function of our desire to know.
 

DR. SUZIE SHEEHY is a physicist, science communicator and academic who divides her time between research groups at the University of Oxford and University of Melbourne. She is currently focused on developing new particle accelerators for applications in medicine. The Matter of Everything is her first book.

Introduction

PART 1 Dismantling Classical Physics
1 Cathode Ray Tube: X-rays and the Electron  
2 The Gold Foil Experiment: The Structure of the Atom
3 The Photoelectric Effect: The Light Quantum

PART 2 Matter beyond atoms
4 Cloud Chambers: Cosmic Rays and a Shower of New Particles
5 The First Particle Accelerators: Splitting the Atom
6 Cyclotron: Artificial Production of Radioactivity
7 Synchrotron Radiation: An Unexpected Light Emerges

PART 3 The Standard Model and Beyond
8 Particle Physics Goes Large: The Strange Resonances
9 Mega-detectors: Finding the Elusive Neutrino
10 Linear Accelerators: The Discovery of Quarks
11 The Tevatron: A Third Generation of Matter
12 The Large Hadron Collider: The Higgs Boson and Beyond
13 Future Experiments

Acknowledgements
Notes
Index