Particle accelerators, also known as particle colliders or atom smashers, have been responsible for some of the most exciting physics findings over the past century, including the discovery of the elusive Higgs boson, the fundamental force-carrying particle of the Higgs field, which gives other particles their mass. But how do particle colliders work? To get an idea of the scales at which particle accelerators work, consider one of the basic units used in their applications: the "barn." For a few decades, most people in the U.S. had such a particle collider in their home: a CRT television. As the particle speeds up, it gains kinetic energy — and energy equals mass, so effectively, the particle gets heavier and heavier.