Over the last thirty years particle theorists have speculated on new physics at the weak scale beyond what is described by the current theory (the standard model). These speculations have been motivated by the heirarchy puzzle; why is the Higgs boson mass so small compared with the Planck mass? In a few years these ideas will be tested at the Large Hadron Collider. I review some of these extensions of the standard model and discuss a model independent approach to characterizing new physics that can modify the properties of the Higgs boson.