  This is a set of four lectures presented at the Theoretical Advanced Study
Institute (TASI-09) in June 2009. I provide an introduction to experiments
designed to detect WIMP dark matter directly, focusing on building intuitive
understanding of the characteristics of potential WIMP signals and the
experimental techniques. After deriving the characteristics of potential
signals in direct-detection experiments for standard WIMP models, I summarize
the general experimental methods shared by most direct-detection experiments
and review the advantages, challenges, and status of such searches (as of late
2009). Experiments are already probing SUSY models, with best limits on the
spin-independent coupling below 10^-7 pb.
