Maybe banging things will fix my shit...that's gonna get taken out of context

I was thinking about the Large Hadron Collider this weekend (because that's something you do when you work in such close proximity to scientists--I call it nerd osmosis), and a thought occurred to me. We've built a giant, circular tube so that we can throw things at other things. This is what we do. When we needed a means to keep warm, we banged rocks together until we got fire. It might have just been something we did out of boredom (nothing on the cave wall that day) and fire was just a toasty side effect. Really, how much of science is just a couple of guys throwing things at other things and writing down what happens. Is this something I could apply to my own problems? Can I do this and avoid bruises?