A Statewide Outreach and Education Experiment in Nebraska

The Cosmic Ray Observatory Project

Dan ClaesUniversity of Nebraska

APS-DPF2006 + JPS2006Monday, October 30, 2006

The Fantastic Four ®©Marvel Comics

CROP article in Lincoln Journal Star, 7 August 2003

The Chicago Air Shower ArrayThe Chicago Air Shower Array

•Located in the Utah Desert•1089 stations, 15m spacing•covering 0.23 square km

each houses 4 scintillators w/tubes1 high and 1 low voltage supply

CROP recycles retired detectors from the Chicago Air Shower Array

September 30, 1999

The CROP team at the Chicago Air Shower Array

(CASA) site

U.S. Army Photo

2000 scintillator panels, 2000 PMTs, 500 low and HV power supplies now at UNL

CASA detectors’ new home at the University of Nebraska

250 miles

450 miles

The Cosmic Ray Observatory ProjectA grid of cosmic ray research stations

expanding across the state

• $1.34 Million NSF grant, 2000-2007 co-funded by ESIE and EPP divisions• Co-PIs Greg Snow and Dan Claes

• 26 Nebraska and 5 Colorado schools enlisted trained in (2-4 week long) summer workshops • about 5 new schools each year

• Colorado program (SALTA) was a joint effort by CROP, WALTA, ALTA• External evaluation: CROP has accomplished most of the educational & scientific goals listed in the original proposal• CROP also serves as excellent training for student (undergrad, graduate) staff at UNL

NSF

CROP Workshops

Oscilloscope

training

Tearingthe oldCASA

counters apart

Scraping, sanding and polishing

Wrapping & light-tighting

Electronics lessons

Four analogPMT inputs

Programmablelogic device

Time-to-digitalconverters

5 VoltDC power

To PCserial port

Discriminator(adjustablethreshold)

GPS receiverinput

Eventcounter

CROP data acquisition electronics card

Developed by Univ. Nebraska, Fermilab (Quarknet), Univ. Washington

• 43 Mhz (24 nsec) clock interpolates between 1 pps GPS ticks for trigger time• TDC’s give relative times of 4 inputs with 75 picosecond resolution

User-friendly, LabView-based control and monitoring GUI

Two detectorsfiring at thesame time

Data streamfor eachevent

Eventcounter

Elapsedrun

time

April 2001 participant meeting at UNL

Marian High Schoolstudents presenting

results and discussingcosmic rays withProf. Jim Cronin,

University of Chicago

Barometric Pressure (mmHg)

727 747

4-F

old

Coi

nci

den

ces

/ 2 h

ours

3000

4200

• Statistical error bars shown• 1.3% decrease per mmHg

Marian High School’s Measurement of Cosmic Ray Rate vs. Barometric Pressure

http://marian.creighton.edu/~besser/physics/barometer.html

Mount Michael Benedictine High School

“The Science Teacher”, November 2001

Ben Plowman, Lincoln High Schoolstate finalist in the American Junior Academy of Sciences

invited to present at the Washington, DC, meeting (February 2005)

Rudy Resch and Kent Shirer presented a poster on their follow-up work at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Phoenix, May 2005)

and placed fourth in the physics category.

UNL Physics Department roof February 2002

Marian High SchoolMarch 8, 2002

Westside High

Omaha

note thetheater

weights!

Several schools are runningdetectors on their roof.

Simultaneous data-taking at 3 sites

UNL Ferguson Hall

Lincoln High

Zoo School

• DAQ card discriminator thresholds set to obtain ~ 100Hz singles rates• At each school, require 3-fold coincidence of detectors• Events “close” in time (within 1 millisecond) have been observed, but NO events close enough (few microseconds) to signal a single air shower

1 mile

Summer 2005

Andy WartaUniversity

of Minnesota

Peter JacobsonTulane University

Andy KubikNorthwestern

University

Andrea FuscherVanderbilt University

Katie EverettUniversity at Buffalo

Jason KellerUniversity of Nebraska

Tracie EvansRalston Public Schools

Xiaoshu XuMaster’s Degree in Statistics

University of Nebraska

Cosmic Ray Observatory Project

Collecting Data with CROP DAQ Card Interface

Doing an Efficiency Scan

1. Disconnect the 4 signal cables from the DAQ card. These are the cables that connect to your 4 detectors.2. Open the CROP_DAQ LabVIEW Program.

3. Click on the "Efficiency" tab make sure the Efficiency Scan button is ON(lit up).

4.  Click on the "Threshold Scan" tab make sure the Threshold Scan button is OFF.

5. Click on the "Data Collection Settings" tab and set the timer ON (green button lit up).

6.  Click on the "Data Acquisition" tab and to begin run click on  (upper left corner under the Edit menu).

http://crop.unl.edu/tutorials/Online help and tutorials available.

On-Line Oscilloscope Cheat Sheets

http://unlhep2.unl.edu/~CROP/oscihomepage.html

• Big variation among our schools in independent activities. Some real successes, some inactive sites

• Hardware/software delays create frustration and idleness

• Close contact very important during academic year

• A scheme for replacing/training new students as classes graduate is very important

• High school schedules are packed (full participation in academic year Saturday meetings is difficult)

• Classroom integration, affect on curriculum not automatic. Need to be tied directly to standards!

• Hard to recruit for long summer workshops

Some Lessons Learned

Our expansion phase (to ~100 schools) will be developed throughshorter remote workshops hosted by the regional offices of the state’s 19 Educational Service Units.

Selected 120 mile radius (2 hr trips) arcs shown

Selected 120 mile radius (2 hr trips) arcs shown

Selected 120 mile radius (2 hr trips) arcs shown

If time allows…

• Aspen High School, Aspen, CO

• Basalt High School, Basalt, CO

• Roaring Fork Valley High School, Carbondale, CO

• Lake County High School, Leadville, CO The highest-elevation school in U.S. -- 10,152 feet above sea level

SALTA: Snowmass Area Large Time-Coincidence Array

Empire

• Clear Creek High School, Empire, CO

Polishing scintillatoredges outside

Conference Center

Making detectors light-tight

SALTA Workshop, July 2001, Snowmass, CO

massphototube

gluing

Henderson Mine Visit Dec 4, 2003hosted by

Chip deWolfe

Marc Whitley Aspen High School

Diana Kruis Basalt High School

Hans-Gerd BernsUniversity of Washington

Dan ClaesUniversity of Nebraska

Michelle Ernzen Lake County School

Laura FrenchRoaring Fork Valley

Nancy Spletzer Clear Creek High School

Scouted 3 possible locations

between depths of2800 3900 ft

110 power available

A portable stand held each muon telescope.

Detectors•telescoped pair with coincidence requirement against noise•sandwiching a ¼ inch lead sheet

were configured into muon telescopes

2 modules taken

down into the mine

Detectors moved at 2-3 week intervals

since dust posed a problem for a PC

we housed a low-power serial digital data logger

alongside the DAQcard

Desktop Base StationAn ~identical pair of modules ran in a fixedlocation (surface office) to establish our baseline

SALTA’s Henderson Project was launched September 29, 2004

Basalt students move thedetectors to the next location

Clear Creek students set up the satellite modules

Rates at Henderson surface base station (10,337 ft above sea level)= 2.5rates at Lincoln, NE (elevation: 1189 ft)

•Data collected between Sept 29 – Dec 8, 2004•monitored 4 locations between depths of 2800-3900 ft

Raw rates in muon telescopes seen to drop from

10 Hz (surface rate) → 1.5 Hz → 0.5 Hz → 0.3 Hz

Some preliminary observations

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Rate (per minute)

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1 25 49 73 97 121 145 169 193 217 241 265 289 313 337 361 385 409 433 457

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1 29 57 85 113 141 169 197 225 253 281 309 337 365 393 421 449 477

Channel 0,1 coincidences

Channel 2,3 coincidences

Successive teams of high school students have been analyzing the data

• identifying stable data run periods• bad data channels

…learning about the statisticalnature of random events

…and calculate accidental coincidence rates and statistical error