The Rise of the Standard Model: A History of Particle Physics from 1964 to 1979

by Lillian Hoddeson (Editor)

Based on a conference held at Stanford University, this book gives the most comprehensive and up-to-date account of an exciting physics revolution--the rise of the Standard Model. The third volume of a series recounting the history of particle physics, this volume focuses on the Standard Model, which explains the microstructure of the world in terms of quarks and leptons and their interactions. Major contributors include Steven Weinberg, Murray Gell-Mann, Michael Redhead, Silvan Schweber, Leon Lederman, and John Heilbron. A collaboration of physicists and historians of science, the wide-ranging articles explore the detailed scientific experiments, the institutional settings in which they took place, and the ways in which the many details of the puzzle fit together to account for the Standard Model.

Genres: Physics, Nonfiction

744 pages, Hardcover

First published November 13, 1997

Reviews

[Mohamed · Rating 3 out of 5]

When newton first realized that the laws of physics that governs the motion of planets must be the same laws that governs the motion of ordinary bodies that we encounter in our everyday life. This was the first aspect of the way that will inspire physicists for centuries about unification of physics laws in different disciplines.

and then Einstein came with special relativity to even modify Newtonian theory to account for the motion of particles with speed near the speed of light this was even further a unification that led Eisenstein himself again to spend 10 years of his life to unify the gravity and movement of accelerated frames in context with special relativity and there was a nice General theory of relativity emerged as a consequence of an answer to the unification question. On the other hand we know much about electricity and magnetism by the early work of great people like Faraday and orested and many others but Maxwell came and put his nice formulation of classical electrodynamics that unifies the laws of electricity and magnetism and developed the very important link between electric and magnetic fields that forms the electromagnetic field.

The story still far from end and after the earlier work of Planck about trying to fit the experimental result of strange black body radiation he proposed the quantization of energy idea that even when he assumed it as a mathematical construction was the start of quantum Revelation that describes the microscopic world and the atoms idea was at this step well accepted after the work of Boltzmann and others.

after this dirac came and during his trial to write a relativistic theory of electron motion he construct the beautiful theory of relativistic quantum mechanics and then the quantum field theory was developed to unify the classical electrodynamics and Quantum mechanics and it is the most accurate experimentally verified theory in history of physics. But the story is not complete because there were still some problems arises in some experiments. The most famous one was the weak interactions that is responsible for many phenomena like beta decay in the atoms. pauli early proposed that there is an elusive particle and he called him a neutrino that is weakly interaction particle that is very hard to detect and it was far at this time for detection. Then Feynman and others work on unifying the quantum field theory with special relativity and the quantum electrodynamics theory came into exist based on this work. at the same time the question of the properties of nucleus and what is the force the is responsible for its stability and the work lead to quantum chromodynamics theory that describes the strong interaction which was beside weak force , gravity and electromagnetic force on of the fundamental forces in nature.

Then Salam and his colleagues unified the weak interaction theory with electromagnetic interaction and then there was an electroweak theory which was then put in context with Quantum chromodynaics theory to establish a standard model of particle physics that is our best understanding of [physics up to now. but for decades the gravity force was always an elusive theory to be unified with other forces and all the trials are far from success until now and what we are looking now if a better weak theory that could allow for interpretation for dark matter and a final unifies theory that could put the 4 forces in context and many other things.

This a long journey that could last a centuries but it is a full of excitement , fear , patience and a lot of different feelings that are worth to experience :)

[Nick Black · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amazon used, 2009-03-0x. Very dense. Full of good material, but lacks the verve of Pais's magnificent Inward Bound: Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World. Frankly not worth reading if one has closely read Pais, but a bibliography without peer and thus a useful reference work.