Week One - Correlation of Muon counts
What did you do this week?:
week one was an introduction to particle physics using the Purdue power point. We also ran the simulation of Rutherford's experiment from The PHET simulation Website. toward the end of the week students chose a variable to perform a correlation coefficient on Muon counts related to an environmental condition or data set.
Why did you do that?:
Starting off slowly, it is important for students to get a grasp of the basic science. By doing so, students can see that muons may not be affected by external conditions like UV index, Heat index, Ozone conditions, Kp values caused by solar storms, temperature, humidity or magnetic declination.
What are you doing next?:
Once the data is collected for the week, students will be introduced to excel graphing and Statistical analysis, especially correlation coefficients (r- values). Upon completion, student will post findings to the quarknet portal.
Why are you doing that?:
The last step of the scientific method is to share your data. This will be done by having students post their research.