You may be familiar with the massive nature of much of scientific research. 
One of the first things brought to mind when talking about physics is the continuing race to build the biggest accelerators, with the largest yet, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland even now undergoing another upgrade. 
In fact, particle physics is not the only realm where scientists are rushing to build the biggest devices. 
Over in astronomy, different countries are competing with each other to see who can build the largest ground-based telescope. Currently, according to eso.org, the European Southern Observatory is planning to have built the next record breaking telescope by 2020, the aptly named European Extremely Large Telescope in the Chilean Andes.
In my opinion, our perception of much of modern science is as a person who has a jar of nitroglycerin and wants to open it but hasn’t found a big enough hammer yet. 
Realistically, one could use a different and far less dramatic technique to open the jar, like trying to screw the top off or pry it open gently with a screwdriver or lever. 
For physics, the jar of nitroglycerin is the fundamental forces and subatomic structure, and the oversized hammers are high energy particle accelerators. 
Sure, you can understand a wide array of phenomena, but even the best high energy particle accelerators struggle to gather enough precise data. 
Many researchers, therefore, opt for the approach of gently screwing or prying open the top of the jar, which is manifested in modern precision and medium energy particle physics.
Many scientists do research in the fields of precision and medium energy particle physics. 
To be a physicist does not require blowing things up with the largest accelerator you can find, to which many researchers will attest. 
Dipangkar Dutta, associate professor of medium and high energy nuclear physics at Mississippi State University said in an email interview that precision experiments are complementary to high energy measurements when it comes to understanding modern physics.
 ”While LHC and other large colliders work at  the ‘energy frontier’, we do our experiments at the ‘intensity frontier,'” she said.
At the LHC they explore the highest energies achieved in man-made machines to produce new particles that have never been seen before.  While, we measure parameters of the same (well-tested theory) using processes that are described very well … but with higher and higher precision to look for smaller and smaller deviations which could also arise due to new forces.”
The screwdriver or lever that Dutta uses is the high intensity, medium energy beam at Jefferson Lab in Newport News Virginia. 
The benefits of using lower energy beams is the higher intensity. “We rely on machines which push the limits of intensity. Here larger intensity implies larger number of interactions and hence better chances of observing rare events,” Dutta said. Although the two regimes of science vary in many ways, they are both important.
 ”Ultimately they are complementary since a discovery at one frontier must be confirmed at the other,” Dutta said.
In astronomy, too, as I mentioned before, there is a great amount of momentum for building the largest instruments possible. 
Modern telescopes like the projected ELT are finally approaching the same scale as the structures which gave birth to astronomy such as the Great Pyramids at Giza and ancient observatories like Stonehenge and Machu Picchu. 
The ELT is projected to be 39.3 meters in diameter, nearly four times wider and 16 times the light collecting power of the current largest telescope, the Great Canaries Telescope. 
The dome and building holding it are so large that they are almost the same size as the third largest of the Great Pyramids of Giza.
Just like in particle physics though, bigger is not always better for astronomy. Modern telescopes are limited in resolving power which is directly proportional to the diameter of the circular mirror and determines the minimum distance at which two objects are distinguishable from each other.
One technique that many astronomers use to overcome this limit is a technique called interferometry. Interferometry uses the concept of interference between light that is in phase, from the exact same source, to connect numbers of smaller telescope together as if they were a large telescope that had the effective diameter of the distance between them, just with less light collecting ability. This larger diameter allows the group of telescopes to resolve objects that are smaller and to make phenomenally better resolution judgments.
Many other kinds of astronomy require neither power nor high resolution, but rather reliable calibration and stability. 
Such are the techniques that require counting the number or wavelength of photons from a star. 
Angelle Tanner, assistant professor of astronomy at MSU, has just returned from a two-week trip to Chile where she and two students operated a 36-inch diameter telescope that has been around for decades. 
When asked “why this particular telescope” she responded, “Dependability; it hasn’t changed; it is well calibrated and stable.  Also, if you want to look at stars that are nearby and bright the larger telescopes will laugh at your proposal.  All of the stars you can see with your eyes at night are too bright for even small telescopes to look at.”
Although high energy and big budget science is awe-inspiring and usually ends up paying for itself, remember the value of precision, quality and dependability when it comes to obtaining a full understanding of how the universe works.