Session D15: 100 Years of Cosmic Rays: Educational Opportunities I

Cosmic Rays for High School Students

We discuss a suite of QuarkNet activities that provide data from the Fermilab cosmic ray DAQ for three learning modes: survey, exploration and investigation. Teachers and students assemble our classroom detectors. They study data locally and/or upload data to a server for others; students without detectors have access to the data. In survey mode, students may sum columns, draw plots comparing columns, calculate descriptive statistics. They can describe patterns and may indicate outliers. Exploration mode provides visual or tabular data for doing measurements that couple values in different columns for a newly derived measurement. Students still draw plots, calculate statistics and describe patterns. Students may attend a master class performing these tasks in a group setting. Students in investigation mode use data and provided analysis and investigation tools to perform research-type investigations. Students can investigate relationships between measurements extant in the data as well as relationships between the presented data and external data sets. They also may perform the same tasks that they do in other modes e.g., draw plots. Students use a project map associated with a browser-based e-Lab to guide their investigations.   

A Portable Classroom Cosmic Ray Detector

Normally, one has to work at an accelerator to demonstrate the principles of particle physics. We have developed a portable cosmic ray detector, the Berkeley Lab Detector, that can bring high energy physics experimentation into the classroom. The detector, which is powered by either batteries or AC power, consists of two scintillator paddles with a printed circuit board. The printed circuit board takes the analog signals from the paddles, compares them, and determines whether the pulses arrived at the same time. It has a visual display and a computer output. The output is compatible with commonly found probes in high schools and colleges. A bright high school student can assemble it. Teachers and students have used a working detector on six of the world's continents. These activities have included cross country trips, science projects, and classroom demonstrations. A complete description can be found at the web site: cosmic.lbl.gov. Besides, basic particle physics, the detector can be used to teach statistics and also to provide an opportunity where students have to determine how much data are taken. In this presentation, we will demonstrate the detector and describe some of the projects that teachers and students have completed with it.   

ASPIRE - Cloud Chambers as an Introduction to Cosmic Ray Observation

ASPIRE is the K12 - Education \& Public Outreach program for the Telescope Array ultra-high energy cosmic ray research project in Utah. The Telescope Array experiment studies ultra-high energy cosmic rays with an array of $\sim$500 surface scintillator detectors and three fluorescence telescope stations observing over 300 square miles in the West Desert of Utah. Telescope Array is a collaboration of international institutions from the United States, Japan, Korea, Russia and Belgium. Cloud chambers are an inexpensive and easy demonstration to visually observe evidence of charged particles and cosmic ray activity both for informal events as well as for K12 classroom activities. Join us in building a cloud chamber and observe cosmic rays with these table-top demonstrations. A brief overview of the Telescope Array project in Millard County, Utah will also be presented.   

Measuring the speed of light using QuarkNet Muon detectors as a method to engage pre-high school students in scientific activity

A small group of middle school students measures the speed of muons using four Quarknet Muon counters and explore using hardware, data acquisition, and analysis during the half day session. The students with our guidance learn about cosmic rays and relativistic particles. They observe the narrow distribution of time differences from the Quarknet Muon counters, and begin to think about ``short'' times. For the measurement, they must understand muon coincidences in pairs of detectors while measuring the differences in the time between two sets separated by a distance of two stories. They must also account for the systematic delay in the signal time as written to the computer, done by interchanging detectors. The students must move and mount hardware, pull cables, run the acquisition computer, and analyze the data in spreadsheets. They are enthusiastic, enjoy themselves, and report well to the next set of students.   

Problem finding and open inquiry science teaching with PARTICLE

We applied the teaching techniques of open inquiry and problem finding in a high school physics course as students used equipment and resources provided by the University of Rochester PARTICLE program and QuarkNet. The goal was to create an environment in which students engaged in self-directed learning so that they assumed more responsibility for their intellectual development. Students determined questions they hoped to answer about cosmic radiation. Having established their questions, the students incorporated scintillator counters in the design and construction of their cosmic ray telescope capable of being used in all of their proposed situations. Each group of three students was responsible for formulating a testable hypothesis, developing and conducting a research project and presenting the results of their findings. We used a standard physics laboratory project rubric to assess creativity, scientific content and how well students met the achievement targets. This exercise also used the methodologies of surveys and interviews of students and college professors of physics and mathematics to determine the effectiveness of this work in the preparation of students to meet expectations of post secondary level study.   

Education and Public Outreach of the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory

The scale and scope of the physics studied at the Auger Observatory offer significant opportunities for original outreach work. Education, outreach and public relations of the Auger collaboration are coordinated in a separate task whose goals are to encourage and support a wide range of education and outreach efforts that link schools and the public with the Auger scientists and the science of cosmic rays, particle physics, and associated technologies. The presentation will focus on the impact of the collaboration in Mendoza Province, Argentina, as: the Auger Visitor Center in Malarg\"{u}e that has hosted over 60,000 visitors since 2001 and a third collaboration-sponsored science fair held on the Observatory campus in November 2010. The Rural Schools Program, which is run by Observatory staff and which brings cosmic-ray science and infrastructure improvements to remote schools, will be highlighted. Numerous online resources, video documentaries, and animations of extensive air showers have been created for wide public release. Increasingly, collaborators draw on these resources to develop Auger related displays and outreach events at their institutions and in public settings to disseminate the science and successes of the Observatory worldwide.   

The ACME Project - Making ATLAS an High Energy ~Cosmic Ray Detector

The ACME group proposes to install a surface array of scintillation detectors at LHC point 1 above the ATLAS detector. This surface array in combination with the muon system of ATLAS allows two complimentary independent measurements of the electro-magnetic and hadronic components of cosmic ray showers with particular sensitivity to the knee region of the cosmic ray energy spectrum. ACME will be a sensitive instrument for the study of primary composition, exotics such as centauro and anti-centauro events and the excess of high multiplicity muon bundles observed at LEP by such experiments as CosmoALEPH and L3C. We envisage that the construction and operation of the surface array presents an outreach opportunity to high school students and their teachers.   

Simulating Cosmic Ray Arrays with LEDs and Other Ideas for Bringing IceCube Science to the Classroom

Bringing cosmic rays to the classroom can be a challenging task, but the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the corresponding surface array called IceTop provide the context and data to do it. Located at the South Pole, IceCube consists of 86 strings of Cherenkov light detectors in a cubic kilometer of ice along with the IceTop surface array, consisting of 81 stations of ice-Cherenkov tanks spread over a square kilometer. An overview of IceCube capabilities, possibilities for making data publicly available for student use, and an activity to help students explore how cosmic rays are detected with IceTop using computer-controlled LEDs to visualize the surface data will be presented.   

The Cosmic Ray Observatory Project: A Statewide Outreach and Education Experiment in Nebraska

For the past 10 years, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) Department of Physics and Astronomy has led the Cosmic Ray Observatory Project (CROP), a statewide education and research experiment involving Nebraska high school students, teachers, and university undergraduates in the study of extensive cosmic-ray air showers. With generous funding from the National Science Foundation in the first 7 years, a growing network of high school teams construct, install, and operate school-based detectors in coordination with UNL physics professors and graduate students. The detector system at each school is an array of scintillation counters recycled from the Chicago Air Shower Array in weather-proof enclosures on the school roof, with a GPS receiver providing a time stamp for cosmic-ray events. The detectors are connected to triggering electronics and a data-acquisition PC inside the building. Students share data via the Internet to search for time coincidences with other sites. The presentation will highlight the scientific and professional development achievements of the project to date, lessons learned since its inception, and plans for continued expansion to the 314 high schools in the state.