With the discovery of the Higgs boson, particle physicists have completed the fifty-year old puzzle of the Standard Model of Particle Physics. The Standard Model explains the composition of ordinary matter via its elementary components and their fundamental interactions. These complete picture comes from years of developments of particle accelerators and detectors, as well as statistical analysis techniques. This talk will introduce the basic components and characteristics of the Standard Model and how these elementary pieces can be composed to make up all ordinary matter. We will then explore the principles of particle acceleration and detectors in particular focusing on the LHC and its experiments at CERN to examine how we see particles and how we can actually discover new ones. Finally we will look at the future: what is left out by the Standard Model and how we are chasing what we don't know.
