Particle Physics course review
I have now completed the 5 hour Particle Physics course which is part of OpenLearn from The Open University.
If you have followed other Open University courses such as How the Universe works (S197), then you will be familiar with some of the material. This particular is adapted from SM123 Physics and space.
In which case the course is not too complex, however you need to go in to this with an open mind. You should be familiar with the idea of Protons, Neutrons and electrons in the context of atomic structure. This course goes one step beyond that and looks at the particles and forces that make up these fundamental particle.
The course starts off with introduction with mentions of particles such as electrons, photons, electron Neutrinos. The course then moves on to discuss leptons which are part of the standard model of particle physics so there for discusses electrons, neutrinos, tau and muons in more details and how these are related.
After this, you look at Quarks and Hadrons, which are the fundamental particles that make up Protons and Neutrons of which there are 6 different types, along side their anti-matter counterparts, you then look at what makes up these matter and anti matter particles, with a closer look at Hadrons, anti-Baryons and Mesons, along with their respective charge levels.
There is an interactive activity at this point which asks you to work out the charge range of different hadrons by randomly selecting different quarks, e.g uud, udc, uds for example. So a knowledge of adding up fractions comes in useful (as chargers are expressed as fractions)
After which you move on to High energy reactions, and learn about the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, again there is an activity to have a go at as part of this.
You then look at strong interactions between particles, this also looks at types of decay (beta) then you look at weak interactions. After which there is a look at W and Z Bosons, after which there is a conclusion.
In all this is a really good introduction to the topic, updates you knowledge from courses that may have been completed several years ago. To show the speed of development, I completed my Certificate in Contemporary Science back in 2012, at the time S197 course, still cited the Higgs Boson as theoretical, since then we have proved it exists and not only that discovered it decays.
This course is a level 1, Open University introductory course, I think this is equivalent to Level 4.
Worth taking a look at if you are interested in Physics and how everything interacts together, just take your time to absorb what is being presented.
You may find the WikiPedia diagram useful too
I have a newer version of this that shows the anti matter counterparts, but you can find this by doing a search on the internet, as there are several versions.
Rating 5/5
Notes:
Updated 6/11/2020 – to include direct reference to SM123 Physics and space.
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