Modelling the invisible

Durham University's Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP) is taking part in the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition for the first time with an exhibit entitled Modelling the Invisible. Here Dr David G. Cerdeño, Assistant Professor at the IPPP explains how they have made complex physics accessible to a general audience and the benefits of taking part in events such as this. Tell us about your exhibit 'Modelling the Invisible'. Our exhibit aims to introduce people to the work we do at the IPPP using numerical simulations to understand fundamental physics, and challenges visitors to think as a scientist who is planning an experiment. Based around two areas of our work we prepared simplified experiments that visitors can perform by themselves in order to see how computational methods are used to solve very complex problems - in this case how we look for hidden particles and dark matter. In the first simplified experiment small balls are scattered off an object that is invisible to the visitor who sees only the distribution of the small balls after the scattering has taken place. The task is now to find the shape of this hidden object.