★This is the first volume in the series which traces the development of human thought and experiments on “the infinitely small” from the early Greek school of philosophy to the late 1960s. The focus is mostly on the beginning of the twentieth century when discoveries revolutionized the way matter was interpreted. At first, physicists experimented with methodologies based on natural radioactivity; later they exploited cosmic rays, and from 1950s they built accelerators that delivered particles in a controlled manner.

★In Volume II, we will talk about accelerators and detectors. After the 1960s, more and more versatile accelerators were built with higher energy and higher intensity of acceleration. More sophisticated techniques were exploited to control particles and arrive at collisions, which was called head-on collision in the automotive field. In addition, new detectors replaced bubble chambers within a decade. New technology was called electronics, and that is why we will talk about electronic devices and how information is collected and channeled to a computer. It will also be necessary to understand how a particle behaves when it passes through a detector and how the electrical signal that reveals its passage is formed. To replace the information that can be extracted from a particle passing through a bubble chamber, various detectors must be assembled efficiently.

★In Volume III, we will see how, guided by enlightenment thought, pieces of the puzzle will form a simple description of matter and the forces that hold it together. Two ingredients are needed to obtain and consolidate knowledge: experiments and theory. Both are equally important; without the skills and means to obtain the information about how nature behaves, there is no way to synthesize it into a theory. Conversely, without the skills to see inside the results of experiments and to interpret what nature reveals to us, there is no complete achievement. Throughout the three volumes, an attempt is made to present both experiments and theory despite in the experiment-oriented tendency.

What do matters look like?
What are its smallest constituents?

To answer these questions, the volume talks about three main themes: accelerators, detectors, and experiments.
It describes in a simple way of how accelerators work, which are, in essence, accelerators are the generators of high-energy particles.
High-energy particles follows the trajectory of particles from their generation. How do they accelerate? How do they deflect? They keep moving until collisions, and the main factors are precisely the detectors. What principles do the detectors base on? What’s their constrcutions?
Finally, the experiments bring accelerators and detectors together to guide readers to grasp the nature of the infinitely smallness in its beauty.

To understand the secrets of this invisible world, it is necessary to study the electronics in depth and focus on the analysis of data.

Flavio P. Marchetto is a member of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics, Turin section, at which, he has worked for several decades as a researcher in subatomic physics. His research has been mainly in the field of fundamental physics with experiments based at CERN in Geneva and FermiLab in Chicago.
Over the past two decades, he has developed detectors for medical physics, especially for radiation and hadron therapy.
A science popularizer and lecturer, he teaches at the University of the Third Age in Turin.