A Standard Model Workbook

This introduction to the Standard Model of particle physics provides students with a classroom-tested workbook to optimize learning this material in student-centered classes. Developed to support a one-semester upper-level undergraduate or graduate course, it includes hundreds of homework problems that will guide students to a clear understanding of this fascinating field.
A Standard Model Workbook provides upper-level undergraduates a one-semester introduction to the Standard Model of particle physics. Its classroom-tested workbook design offers multiple paths through the material, consisting of short chapters that provide an overview of a topic followed by opportunities for students to work out the details for themselves, concluding with homework problems to further develop students’ understanding of the concepts. This allows students to truly own the materials by working through it and allows instructors to construct an active, student-centered class.Topics include a review of special relativity and quantum mechanics; the Lagrangian mechanics of fields; some basic quantum field theory; Feynman diagrams; solutions to the Dirac equation; the U(1), SU(2), and SU(3) symmetries and their implications for electrodynamics; the electroweak theory and quantum chromodynamics; renormalization; the Higgs mechanism; fermion and neutrino masses; experimental tests and applications of the Standard Model; and a look at possibilities beyond the Standard Model. The book is designed to offer multiple paths through the material so that instructors can choose what to emphasize. Online “Hints and Selected Solutions” are also available, as is an online Instructor’s Manual.

Thomas A. Moore is a professor in the physics department of Pomona College. He graduated from Carleton College in 1976, and earned an M. Phil. in 1978 and a Ph. D. in 1981 from Yale University. He then taught at Carleton College and Luther College before taking his current position at Pomona College in 1987, where he won a Wig Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1991. He served as an active member of the national Introductory University Physics Project (IUPP), and has published a number of articles about astrophysical sources of gravitational waves, detection of gravitational waves, and new approaches to teaching physics. His previous books include A Traveler's Guide to Spacetime (McGraw-Hill, 1995) on special relativity, and a six-volume introductory calculus-based physics text called Six Ideas That Shaped Physics (McGraw-Hill, 2003).