First of a series of particle physics youtubes

by **Lincoln** on July 7th, 2011, 7:07 pm

The following is the first of a series of videos on particle physics available on youtube. The target audience is the general public.

This particular video is about the Higgs boson. The others will come out slowly.

by **Forest_Dump** on July 7th, 2011, 7:41 pm

Wow. I never had a mental picture of you before. Or at least that wasn't it.

It was actually very good and I learned something. Very well explained but I feel like I am jumping in the middle. Maybe some kind of intro to lead into how we know the difference between atomic and subatomic particles, basically how we got to here. But I am looking forward to the rest.

by **Forest_Dump** on July 7th, 2011, 7:42 pm

Wasn't crazy about the music though.

by **Forest_Dump** on July 7th, 2011, 7:56 pm

Assuming thats you of course. And thats not just an epistemological thing.

by **Lincoln** on July 7th, 2011, 8:46 pm

It has to be about 3 minutes. You can only do so much. The idea is to have several, short "factoid-like" videos to pander to the YouTube generation. If they want more, well there are books out there.

Wanted to have U2 write an anthem for this, but Bono insisted on a big cut in the profits, which are envisioned to run into the dollars.

I am absolutely curious as to what your vision of me was...or why that guy (who we've established in another thread might well not be me) wasn't your vision. You can PM if you want.

Jim Shultz did an awesome job with the visuals on the intro.

Website · by **xcthulhu** on July 8th, 2011, 12:47 pm

A+

The graphics were excellent. You were informative and clear as usual. I cracked up at the Eddy thing.

And it's true that young people's attention span is limited to 140 characters, so short is good.

Lincoln wrote:Wanted to have U2 write an anthem for this, but Bono insisted on a big cut in the profits, which are envisioned to run into the dollars.

Hmmm... how attached are you to the music? There's a bunch of similar sounding creative commons stuff (although then you'd have to license your videos accordingly I think?).

The music sort of reminded me of she (all her stuff is under creative commons I'm pretty sure):

by **Lincoln** on July 8th, 2011, 12:58 pm

Eddie is a rather fun research professor I know. He's one of the most good natured guys I know. The original script ran "My buddy Eddy, an ex cop and no stranger to donuts," but it got nixed by the pro-cop lobby.

It was fun. And while I contributed a lot of the vision of the graphics, the actual execution was done by a colleague of mine and he should get the credit. I'll report that there wasn't much enthusiasm for the music.

by **Forest_Dump** on July 8th, 2011, 1:34 pm

Lincoln wrote:I am absolutely curious as to what your vision of me was...or why that guy (who we've established in another thread might well not be me) wasn't your vision.

I suppose I really didn't have any mental picture of what you looked like or what your voice sounded like, etc. I have been purely responding to the written word without really thinking about who was writing it. I guess thinking only of the curtain and not who or what is behind it.

As to the introductory thing, I suppose that while I have had some exposure to physics, obviously my high school education, casual reading (and even sporadically and casually sitting in on some first year lectures by an interesting lecturer) didn't really impress on me what the "Higgs" thing was really about. So I suspect you do need some level of knowledge to even think of looking for something on Higgs or Higgs Boson.

by **Lincoln** on July 8th, 2011, 3:21 pm

Yeah...we will be doing some more introductory presentations, but the first goal is to have an analogy to give to reporters and others who ask specific questions.

You can do only so much with 3 minutes and about 700 words.

by **Forest_Dump** on July 8th, 2011, 4:03 pm

Well, like I said I liked it, learned something from it and will be looking forward to more.

by **Deftil** on July 11th, 2011, 11:45 am

This is awesome. More please.

by **Lincoln** on July 11th, 2011, 11:59 am

The scripts for #'s 2-5 are written and #'s 6-8 are roughed in. We are currently resource limited by the availability of the animator. [Who totally rocks.]

But I'm working on it. The next few will come out on a 2-month-ish time scale, then hopefully we'll cut the production time in half.

by **Marshall** on July 11th, 2011, 2:09 pm

Lincoln wrote:The scripts for #'s 2-5 are written and #'s 6-8 are roughed in. ...

Adept and pleasant explanation. Good Idea to use YouTube for lecturelets on fundamental physics. Someone said "A+" which seemed like a correct efficient response.

I'd be curious to know the topics addressed in #'s 2-5.

It shows that it can be a virtue to stay matter-of-fact and relaxed (and as truthful as one can be in a 3-minute bite of science) and that this can work better than for example strained poetical analogies that overstimulate the listener's imagination and ultimately result in jazzed-up confusion.

Complements on what we've seen so far. You are keeping us in suspense. Can the followup #'s stay as cool understated witty and interesting as #1?

by **Lincoln** on July 11th, 2011, 2:21 pm

We are considering various ordering for the next ones. Topics (not in explicit order) supersymmetry, how we'll find supersymmetry, how to find Higgs bosons, the Standard Model (primer), antimatter, extra dimensions, anatomy of a detector, how an accelerator works, matter antimatter asymmetry, neutrino oscillations, dark matter and dark energy.

That'll keep us busy for awhile.

The "look" will be the same, as will the approximate timing. We're aiming for the low-attention span YouTube crowd, plus having short explanations for reporters who ask "OK...just what is the Higgs boson?" and similar questions.

Given my nuts and bolts analogy approach, I hope to not get overhyped ever. I'll save that for when I'm famous.

by **Jordan** on July 11th, 2011, 4:06 pm

As the village idiot in residence may I say that was wonderfully clear and informative, further I was left thirsting for more. Great job! Looking forward to the future 'episodes' and if you can squeeze in a quick tour of the facility with your commentary I'd be one of many that would enjoy it ( I know that isn't on the cards - it would be very cool though). Great production I thought and a fantastic start to the series.

by **Lincoln** on July 11th, 2011, 4:19 pm

Actually, we're tring to keep the series "facility-neutral" without mentioning the specific laboratories or accelerators. The idea is the physics. There are already some videos that talk about the laboratories. If you have a laboratory you want to see, I might be able to dig up the relevant video for you.

by **Jordan** on July 11th, 2011, 6:18 pm

I can understand that concept and the reasons for it (which I agree with), however having seen you in the presentation I couldn't help but think of how great it would be to have a parallel series of you walking around with a hard hat on, pointing at gizmos and giving a similarly humorous explanation on the tools of the trade. A mere fantasy alas yet one many of us would enjoy is all that I meant :¬)

by **Lincoln** on July 11th, 2011, 7:24 pm

Well, it is possible of course. However, I first have to get the rate up to 1-1.5 videos/month to make that idea possible.

There is the possibility of having a different video, with a different look and not obviously part of the series. This is maybe interesting as part of the decommissioning of the Tevatron. [Obviously getting into the LHC is a bit more problematic nowadays...]

I did a video kind of like you're talking about for some Swedish television show...something akin to Nova. It was a long time ago and I've never found it online.

by **psionic11** on July 11th, 2011, 11:16 pm

Great job. A well-produced video using multimedia (speech, animations, graphics, fishtanks) is several orders of magnitude more effectively informative than a book on the subject.

(A picture is worth a thousand words)

I had to watch it twice to glean all the info, but it was very informative and very accessible. Of course, you're not going to reach the same youtube audience that caters to Justin Bieber fans, but making science accessible and polished to the curious can only be a good thing.

Not at all what I thought a Higgs boson is, much less what a Higgs field is. Hmmph, not quite the aether of the turn of last century, but particles that make up a field? Interesting. Wonder how that relates to quantum foam. Looking forward to the rest of the video episodes.

by **Lincoln** on July 12th, 2011, 6:42 am

It's worth noting that every electric field is made of photons. A beach is made of grains of sand. A diamond is made of atoms of carbon.

There are endless examples of phenomena that seem to us to be smooth, continuous and ever dividable into smaller and smaller things that really aren't. A carbon atom is so small that, from our point of view, it is essentially zero in size. It's only when we probe smaller sizes that we finally see how the smallest bit of a diamond differs from a mathematical point.

A similar realization is that, when you consider the entire universe, galaxies are of insignificant size and, to all intents and purposes, can be treated as point-like particles. At the largest sizes, one can treat the universe as a uniform field of galactic matter.

I have a script for "how to find a Higgs boson," but this will not be the next one released.

by **Terry** on July 13th, 2011, 9:03 am

Nice video. I am looking forward for the next one.
So, how the Higgs field explains any phenomena involving changes in rest mass such as particle jet formation, nuclear fission and fusion, pair creation and annihilation? How does mass transformation actually take place?

by **Lincoln** on July 13th, 2011, 9:35 am

Start a new thread in physics. But no.

by **Terry** on July 20th, 2011, 12:11 pm

Structure of the Higgs field
In the standard model, the Higgs field is an SU(2) doublet, a complex spinor with four real components (or equivalently with two complex components), with a Standard Model U(1) charge of −1.

It transforms as a spinor under SU(2). Under U(1) rotations, it gets multiplied by a phase; this mixes the real and imaginary part of the complex spinor into each other, so this is not the same as two complex spinors mixing under U(1) (which would have eight real components between them), but instead is the spinor representation of the group U(2).

After symmetry breaking, three of the four degrees of freedom in the Higgs field mix with the W and Z bosons, while the one remaining degree of freedom becomes the Higgs boson – a new scalar particle.

What this mental artifact trys to tell?
What is the train of thought leading to the Higgs field?
Isn't it difficult to explain it in a more popular way? I think so. Most materials are either too simple or totally non-comprehensible. I don't feel a sense of getting the line of thought.

by **Lincoln** on July 20th, 2011, 12:50 pm

I guess I don't understand your question. The film explains the effect of the Higgs field without worrying about mixing spinors into electroweak bosons and the Higgs boson.

There are many levels at which one can pitch a discussion, my video is but one attempt, but I think it conveys the conceptual concepts of what the Higgs field does, without bringing in math that most people would prefer to ignore.

by **Terry** on July 20th, 2011, 1:16 pm

It just raise my interest to go deeper about the Higgs. It would be nice if you have further knowledge on Higgs to share. In fact, Higgs is as elusive for me as the ether. It would probably take another Einstein to get rid of it.

by **Lincoln** on July 20th, 2011, 1:25 pm

Well, actually I know a lot about the Higgs boson. My research group(s) are the ones who will find or kill it in the next year or three.

Start a thread in physics and ask your question. This thread is for a video series.

by **Lincoln** on July 21st, 2011, 5:15 am

http://amazings.es/2011/07/14/que-es-el-boson-de-higgs-fermilab/

I had nothing to do with this, but here is a Spanish-subtitled version if that is of interest.

by **BorisOfTerreHaute** on August 7th, 2011, 8:59 pm

Nice Lincoln,
Right ON!

by **Lincoln** on August 8th, 2011, 7:01 am

Thanks...glad you liked it.

I filmed #2 on Friday, but it won't be my favorite. #3 totally rocks...probably better than #1. The script for #3 is final, now it's just a matter of waiting for studio time.

#2 will be available after post production. Call it 2-3 weeks.

by **Lincoln** on November 14th, 2011, 2:36 pm

Video #2 is now available. [It turns out that the one I mentioned in the last post will be revamped. That's why this one took so long.]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en2S1tBl1_s

Antimatter is cool!

First of a series of particle physics youtubes

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