Cindy Schwarz is a Professor of Physics at Vassar College. She received her PhD in experimental physics from Yale University and remained active in particle physics experiments at Brookhaven through 1992. At that point, she changed her line of scholarship to focus on pedagogy and curriculum design with a focus on students not planning to major in physics (or even science). Her previous work has been reviewed as “A great little book, and if every physics textbook was like this, physics classrooms would be crowded”.

Table of Contents: Matter in the early 20th century / Forces and interactions / A glimpse at the particle zoo / More particles and conservation rules / Simplifications of the zoo: quarks / The standard model / Particle accelerators / Particle detectors / Open questions