Demystifying the Higgs Boson

From Open Culture:

Demystifying the Higgs Boson with Leonard Susskind, the Father of String Theory in Physics | September 6th, 2012


In early July, researchers working at CERN in Europe announced they had found it — the Higgs Boson. Finally, we had proof of a theory first formulated in 1964. It was a big day. Physicists everywhere rejoiced. The media did too. But the media coverage didn’t help the public understand the discovery very well. Leonard Susskind, a prominent theoretical physicist at Stanford, realized that. So, days later, he gave a free public lecture where he explained how the Higgs mechanism works and what it actually means to “give mass to particles.” And it all involved taking his audience through some basic quantum mechanics and explaining the concept of fields, plus using a handy-dandy sombrero for a prop. You can watch the full presentation above.