how do particle accelerators work and why are they important?
In: Physics
“particle accelerators” is a huge class of devices. it is about as vague as saying “floating object”
All of them have 1 thing in common, they accelerate particles, in general using powerful electromagnets. other than that, nothing links them.
they can be small like a crt tube in a tv, or kilometers across like the LHC.
their purpose can range from displaying an image (crt tv), workong as a microscope (sem), discovering/creating new elements, descovering subsubatomic particles (lhc), electroplating things, making mems devices, etc. a huge range of uses and designs.
Particle accelerators work by accelerating particles to a speed where the acceleration is pretty high. On average, I think the acceleration is typically around 3 but in some cases it can be as high as 62. One time I tried accelerating particles but it only got to 2. But that’s how they work in general.
Tiny things are hard to see. But if you have a tiny thing and you make it go really fast, you can smash it into things and see what happens. If you have two tiny things and smash them together, well you just created an interaction that can be measured and analyzed. Particle accelerators make the tiny things (electrons, positrons, protons, and antiprotons) go super quick and see what happens.
Imagine you have a sealed up clock. You want to find out how it works inside. One way to do this is to throw the clock on the ground so it breaks and all the parts spill out. Those parts give you insight into how the clock works.
With particle accelerators, the “clocks” are very very small. By applying just the right magnetic field and doing things just right, we can get these very small objects traveling at incredible speeds, over 150k miles per second. They collide these tiny zooming particles into things, and all the insides fall out.
Studying the fragments gives insight into exactly is happening inside these very small particles
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