CERN's Large Hadron Collider is a study in superlatives: The world's largest particle accelerator, housing some of the coldest places in the universe, causes incredibly powerful beams to collide, giving us a glimpse into the nature of the smallest particles. It takes a special kind of designer to see it and think, "I wonder if I could make a home version?"

Patrick Stevenson-Keating is that designer. A product and interaction designer at Superflux by day, he created the Handcrafted Particle Accelerator – a working model that you can set up in your living room – in his spare time. A self-confessed science geek, Stevenson-Keating wanted to try to take the passion he felt for physics and communicate that to a public who might have otherwise overlooked the subject.

"Much of modern science is becoming increasingly abstract and isolated from most people’s relatable lives," Stevenson-Keating says. For evidence, look no further than the below pop quiz about the Higgs Boson.

Stevenson-Keating sees a strong parallel between design and science. "To me, both subjects have the incredible ability to completely alter the way in which you view the world - they can turn the banal into something really fantastic, almost magical," says Stevenson-Keating. "Unfortunately, a lot of the time, the way science is communicated to the public makes it unapproachable and alienating."

By creating a DIY version of a particle accelerator, Stevenson-Keating wanted to bring the science home to people. He unveiled his handiwork at a prestigious department store during Milan Design Week in April 2012. But with the Higgs announcement, his invention just got a lot more relevant. "A hand-built particle accelerator which could fit on your kitchen table, surrounded by designer homeware, was a wonderful juxtaposition," he says.

Onlookers admire the parts and prepare for science. Onlookers admire the parts and prepare for science.

Despite the handmade aesthetic of the particle accelerator, the science behind it – developed in collaboration with a physicist at Cambridge – is the real deal.

Like its LHC big brother, the HPA fires a beam of particles through a vacuum, directed and focused by magnets. When the particles collide there is a reaction. The main difference is in what's colliding. CERN mostly works with protons; the HPA uses electrons. Ever the designer, Stevenson-Keating explains this as a self-imposed constraint. "The reason for this is purely practical, as the energy levels to create proton acceleration are beyond anything achievable on this scale and budget."

In many ways, the HPA is a throwback to the days of Enlightenment science, when traveling scientists would amaze the public with live demonstrations that were half lecture and half sideshow. It's also a reminder that parlaying scientific discoveries to the masses is not a new challenge.

Inspired by that Enlightenment demo-lecture tradition and the excitement it generated, Stevenson-Keating built the accelerator as an example of how we might return to a more hands-on approach to science. The HPA is a reminder that there's a lot you can do in your garage.

"Maybe we aren't moving toward a future where everyone has a particle accelerator on their mantlepiece," he says, "But the open source movement combined with the rapid development of low-cost technology is surely paving the way for some exciting scientific developments."

Science! Science!

Pictures courtesy of Patrick Stevenson-Keating.