Mirror Mirror on the Wall by Nick on November 1, 2012 When Peter Higgs thought up the ideas behind the particle that we now know as the Higgs boson his aim was to find a way to bring together two of the fundamental forces of nature, known as the electromagnetic and weak forces. Following the success of his ideas,  we now know that these two forces are really just two aspects of a single electroweak force. The critical insight that Higgs provided was to show how the symmetry between the two forces could be hidden from us, or in physicists' language how the symmetry could be broken. The Viewer of Beautiful Forms One of my main aims when writing my book Higgs Force was to explain what physicists mean when they say that a symmetry is broken. But before tackling symmetry breaking it was necessary to describe symmetry itself. The device that I chose for this purpose was the kaleidoscope, which was invented by the eminent Scottish scientist David Brewster in the early years of the 19th century. Brewster named his toy the "kaleidoscope" by combining three Greek words: "kalos" meaning beautiful, "eidos" meaning shape or form and "scopos" meaning viewer -- the viewer of beautiful forms. As is well known, kaleidoscopes use collections of mirrors to produce symmetrical patterns. Mathematicians such as the great 20th century geometer Donald Coxeter have developed the kaleidoscope as a model for producing an abstract and completely general theory of symmetrical objects that could