Higgs mechanism

The Higgs mechanism is a way for particles to get mass. Particles are tiny pieces of stuff that make up everything in the universe. They naturally want to move around really fast, but certain particles can't do that because they feature something called "mass" which makes them stay still. The Higgs mechanism explains how these particles get mass, and why some particles have more mass than others.

Think about being in a swimming pool. If you try to swim really fast, the water is really thick and pushes back against you, making it hard to move. That's kind of like how mass works— it's like a big pool of something called the Higgs Field that particles have to swim through. Some particles swim through this "Higgs Field" more easily than others. The easier it is for a particle to swim through this Higgs Field, the more mass it has.