We now come to another interesting title in the Science for Everyone, called Elementary Kinematics of Elementary Particles by G. I. Kopylov. This book by and large introduced me to many concepts in particle physics. This book is especially relevant with the hot [literally and figuratively] discoveries being currently made in the LHC.

This is what the back cover of the book says:

This book tells a fascinating story of one of physics today: the discovery of primary building blocks of matter. This field of science is called particle or high-energy physics and is one of the frontiers of present day physical research.

How is it possible to detect particles a hundred thousand times smaller than the atom, which itself is many times smaller than an apple as the apple is smaller than the Earth? How can we follow motion of particles that have velocity almost that of light? How can we measure the lifetime of these particles when it is of the order of 0.00000000000000000000001 second? What kind of clock can we ;’use? How can we investigate the properties of these astonishing and elusive bits of matter?

All these and many other questions are comprehensively answered in this book written for the layman by the late Dr. Gersten Kopylov, who was a prominent scientist, well known in the world of particle physics. This book was written to be understood even by readers having only a secondary school education and it requires a knowledge of only  elementary algebra and geometry. Nevertheless in the author’s treatment , the material is no way oversimplified or distorted.

The book was translated from the Russian by Nicholas Weinstein and was first published by Mir in 1983.

Update Jan 2020

The Internet Archive Link

The contents of the book are as under:

Part One Kinematics for the Lyrical

Chapter 1 What It’s All About 9
Chapter 2 Mores in the Subatomic Worl d 13
Chapter 3 Energy and Momentum of Fast Particles 26
Chapter 4 More on Energy and Momentum 41
Chapter 5 Conservation of Energy and Momentum 63
Chapter 6 Kinematics in the World of Accelerators 82
Chapter 7 How Particles Are Discovered 92
Chapter 8 How Resonance Particles Are Discovered 112

Part Two Kinematics for the Schoolboy

Chapter 9 The Momenta Hedgehog 135
Chapter 10 What Colour Are Elementary Particles? 145
Chapter 11 Relativistic Transformations of the Momenta Hedgehog 154
Chapter 12 The Story of How the  π⁰ Meson Was Found in Cosmic Rays 178
Chapter 13 2 + 3 = 23 200
Chapter 14 Three-Photon Cone 216
Chapter 15 ” …With a Faint Wave of the Hand…” 228
Chapter 16 To Our Regret, the Last Chapter 246

Conclusions 263

Index 268