‘Particle Fever’ a captivating documentary about physics

One mark of a good documentary is that it’s able to get viewers to care about a topic in which they’re not personally invested; an even better documentary can get viewers worked up about an issue they don’t remotely understand.

And it’s a rare mind that can grasp particle physics. But “Particle Fever” does an excellent job of laying out what’s at stake as it documents the creation and fine-tuning of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. Built by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, it’s the world's largest and Director: Mark Levinson. Rating: Not rated.

Note: At Harkins Camelview. Great Fair

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Bomb most powerful particle collider.

A five-story behemoth of micro-electronics and a 17-mile underground circular tunnel designed for the high-speed smashing together of particles, it’s a modern marvel. And in 2012, it was used to conduct one of the most important physics experiments ever in an effort to confirm or deny the exis- tence of the Higgs boson particle.

The triumph of “Particle Fever” is that it’s able to make all of this make sense as it charts the build-up to the big experiment. It also builds an emotional investment by focusing on the human element. The film is peopled with exhausted, giddy and terrified scientists who devoted decades of their academic and professional lives to a field that hinges on this one experiment, so that even the most mathaverse viewer will be on pins and needles to know the results.