Cosmic Rays & Quarknet Outreach
QuarkNet is a nationwide outreach program run by Fermilab National Laboratory to help high school Teachers introduce their students to the world of high energy particle physics. Teachers, students, and physicists collaborate to inform students about the science and technology behind detecting cosmic ray muons as well using that data for studies. Here we present how the QuarkNet detectors work as well as several interesting experiments measuring the flux from different detector orientations that we ran on our college campus, the studies we conducted, and some of the results that followed from them. We use scintillator paddles, photomultiplier tubes, a DAQ card, and a computer to detect and capture the data from the cosmic ray muon strikes.
As a group at an educational institution it is our responsibility (and pleasure) to educate the public about the field of high-energy physics.
As members of the CMS experiment we joined the DOE/NSF-supported QuarkNet outreach program and became a QuarkNet site in 2001. Our program includes 10 – 12 high school teachers each year and runs full time for 2 weeks during the summer with another week of follow-up during the year. We have excellent contacts to area schools since many of their physics teachers are graduates of Florida Tech. Our QuarkNet program has run successfully for 8 years and has brought good publicity for high-energy physics and Florida Tech. Teachers have returned to campus with their classes for demonstrations and discussions, and faculty have visited the high schools. There were also newspaper articles in the regional press.
Quarknet in Action
Quarknet In Action (Reports And Papers)
- Devon Madden, "The Absorption of Space Radiation with Development in Shielding Materials," High School Science Fair Report, April 2017