Journey into the Atom: Individual Exploration

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This list is by no means a complete or definitive list of resources. There are innumerable web sites and books dealing with this subject, so if you are interested in particle physics, we suggest that you consult a librarian, a physics professor or teacher, your favorite search engine, the newsgroups listed below, or e-mail to the authors.
The authors are not responsible for "dead" or erroneous links since the Web is by nature dynamic. If you find anything wrong with the links on this page or have uncovered a hidden gem that we happened to miss, please either leave a message on the comment board so that everyone knows about it.

Your chance to ask the experts.

sci.physics.particle - Discussions about the Standard Model and extensions to it.
sci.physics.accelerators - Particle accelerators and the physics of beams.

Department web sites.

UCLA Particle Beam Physics Lab - operates a 20 MeV compact RF-driven linear electron accelerator for use in experiments from free electron lasers to plasma accelerators.
At the California Institute of Technology, you will find the High Energy Physics Department, the Particle Theory Group, the Neutrino Physics project, and the Quantum Optics group.
The Laboratory for Nuclear Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
University of Oxford - Particle and Nuclear Physics
New Mexico State University - Nuclear/Particle Physics
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - Nuclear and Particle Physics

Learn about the latest experiments and theories.

The Particle Data Group - An excellent resource for particle physics experimental data including masses, decay modes, and law violations.
Los Alamos National Laboratory High-Energy and Particle Physics
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's High Energy Physics Group
The Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany
The American Physical Society - Publishers of numerous physics journals and maintainers of an electronic database of articles
New Mexico Center for Particle Physics - allows students at the University of New Mexico to participate in experiments around the world.
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - Institute for Particle Physics
National Centre of Particle and High Energy Physics - Belarus.

Here's where the fun stuff happens!

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory - The largest accelerator complex in the US and the discoverers of the top quark.
CERN - An international accelerator complex located in Switzerland. They also started the Web.
SLAC - The world's largest linear accelerator, located in Stanford University, California. It's web site was the first in the US.
DESY - Germany's largest particle accelerator
Brookhaven National Laboratory has the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron, the National Synchrotron Light Source, and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
KEK - Japan's largest particle accelerator

Find even more sites about particle physics, quantum mechanics, relativity, and more.

Yahoo! Directories
Particle Physics Education Sites
The WWW Virtual Library: Physics
The HEP Virtual Phonebook - contains links to nearly all particle physics institutes and accelerators in the world.

These are listed in the order we recommend that you read them (the last ones are quite technical, but the first few are popular science books).

A Brief History of Time : From the Big Bang to Black Holes by Stephen Hawking - A must-read for people interested in the subject.
QED : The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Phillips Feynman - A non-mathematical approach to using quantum mechanics; another must-read
The Particle Garden : Our Universe As Understood by Particle Physicists by Gordon Kane - A great book; simple to read, but extremely informative
The Tao of Physics : An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism by Fritjof Capra - Very interesting and informative ... sorta like this site! :-)
From Atoms to Quarks : An Introduction to the Strange World of Particle Physics by James Trefil - An excellent overview for the slightly scientific
The Particle Play by J.C. Polkinghorne
Particles and Fields : Readings from Scientific American by William J. Kaufmann - For the scientists
The Particle Hunters by Yuval Ne'eman and Yoram Kirsh