Happy to announce that I have a new course out with The Great Courses (produced by The Teaching Company). This one is called The Higgs Boson and Beyond, and consists of twelve half-hour lectures. I previously have done two other courses for them: Dark Matter and Dark Energy, and Mysteries of Modern Physics: Time. Both of those were 24 lectures each, so this time we’re getting to the good stuff more quickly.
The inspiration for the course was, naturally, the 2012 discovery of the Higgs, and you’ll be unsurprised to learn that there is some overlap with my book The Particle at the End of the Universe. It’s certainly not just me reading the book, though; the lecture format is very different than the written word, and I’ve adjusted the topics and order appropriately. Here’s the lineup:
- The Importance of the Higgs Boson
- Quantum Field Theory
- Atoms to Particles
- The Power of Symmetry
- The Higgs Field
- Mass and Energy
- Colliding Particles
- Particle Accelerators and Detectors
- The Large Hadron Collider
- Capturing the Higgs Boson
- Beyond the Standard Model
- Frontiers: Higgs in Space
Because it is a course, the presentation here is in a more strictly logical order than it is in the book, starting from quantum field theory and working our way up. It’s still aimed at a completely non-expert audience, though a bit of enthusiasm for physics will be helpful for grappling with the more challenging material. And it’s available in both audio-only or video — but I have to say they did a really nice job with the graphics this time around, so the video is worth having.
And it’s on sale! Don’t know how long that will last, but there’s a big difference between regular prices at The Great Courses and the sale prices. A bargain either way!
I just finished watching the last lecture tonight and would recommend the course as first rate. I commend you for making the explanations very accurate and not talking down to the audience or using misleading analogies. Steven Pollock’s “Particle Physics for Non-Physicists” is still a good starter course (another bundling option?). It would have been fine with me if you had reserved one lecture to go into some mathematical detail similar to M.Y. Han’s “Story of Light” or Kerson Huang’s “Fundamental Forces of Nature”. Perhaps you could do something like that in the future. I have viewed all your courses and especially liked the course on TIME. You deserve to sell many copies.
Dat hair doe.