Higgs Boson -- on Your Own

Abstract

One of the highlights of 2012 in physics is related to two papers, published by the ATLAS and the CMS Collaborations, that announced the discovery of at least one new particle in pp collisions at CERN LHC. At least one of the properties of this new particle is found to be similar to that of the Higgs boson, the last and most difficult to find building block from the Standard Model of particle physics. Physics teachers are frequently approached by their media-educated students, who inquire about the properties of the Higgs boson, but physics teachers are rarely trained to teach this elusive aspect of particle physics in elementary, middle or junior high schools. In this paper I describe a card-game, that can be considered as a hands-on and easily accessible tool that allows interested teachers, students and also motivated lay-persons to play with the properties of the newly found Higgs-like particle. This new particle was detected through its decays to directly observable, final state particles. Many of these final state particles are represented in a deck of cards, that represent elementary particles, originally invented to popularize the physics of quark matter in the so-called Quark Matter Card Games. The Higgs decay properties can be utilized, playfully, in a Higgs boson search card game. The rules of this game illustrate also the need for some luck, to complement knowledge and memory, useful skills that this game also helps to develop. The paper is organized as a handout or booklet, that directly describes how to play the Higgs boson on Your Own card game.