This year at FIT was very successful. After last year's summer internship, students were introduced cosmic rays and muon detection. A discussion came about limiting background noise and coincidence among paddles. That following school year a student from Palm Bay High School (Devon), wanted to see if background noise  could be limited by submerging the Paddles under water. After speaking with Dr. Holmann, we decided to surround the tanks with 10 galloon aquariums. As a result Devon placed first in the physics category at regional and 4th at the Florida State Science fair.

This summer at FIT we were able to recruit 5 local teachers, 1 Quarknet lead teacher from UCF, and 2 lead teachers giving a total of 8 teachers. During the teacher workshop we had talks from local professors. Dr Rybicki gave two talks. One on Nuclear Fission and one on Nuclear weapons. Dr Petite gave a talk on categories of the stars and the sun. She also brought out a telescope with a sun filter to observe sunspots. Dr Holmann gave a talk on CERN and his research on using Muon counts to detect Uranium transport. We were also able to visit FIT's new DSL (digital scholar lab).

Quarknet Fellow Robert Frankowicz and Dr Mark Adams arrived for the week long workshop. Discussions on posters, equip software, and plateauing paddles were led by Robert and discussions on e-lab, speed of a muon, and scattering were led by Mark Adams. Dr. Yumiceva arrived during the week of June 13th and discussed a student project on the effect of electromagnetic fields and the interaction between muons based on the right hand rule. The discussion also involved the loss of energy as muons passed through a layer of lead.  UCF lead teacher Adam LeMee instructed students and teachers through the following quarknet activities:  "Rolling with Rutherford", "Top Quark" & "Lasers/Spectroscopes".

FIT Quarknet also hosted 6 High School students.  Two of the students were from Bayside H.S, to students were from Melbourne H.S. and two of the students were from Palm Bay H.S.  Students designed their own projects, collected and analyzed the data, then shared their findings by creating posters on the quarknet sight. Topics of interest included:

          Flux study comparison at different floors of a building

          Effects of an electromagnet on coincidence

          Deflection of muon's through a Faraday Cage

          Effects of atmospheric conditions on muon counts

          Experimental quantification of the speed of a muon

          Effect of noise flux study by introduction of a plasma (nebula) ball

Quarknet/FIT 2016 Summer Workshop

Welcome to the Quarknet/FIT 2016 summer workshop May 31 - June 6.

Pre-Workshop Info

• The workshop will be held on the 4th Floor, Olin Physical Science Center (OPS), F.I.T. main campus (map)

• Parking: There are visitor spaces on the first floor of the parking garage. Once you get a parking permit from Mike you can park anywhere on campus.

• Lunch is available in the FIT dining hall.

• Register for a Cosmic Ray eLab account

Lead Teachers

• Mike O'Donnell, PBMHS

• Joe Laub, MHS

Participants and Visitors

• Mark Adams, Quarknet staff (FNAL)

• Chris Cantrell (MHS)

• Robert Frankowiak, Quarknet Cosmic Fellow

• Adam LaMee, Quarknet Teaching & Learning Fellow (UCF)

• Jake Lenhart (Space Coast Jr/Sr HS)

• Ram Maharaj (Bayside HS)

• David Proctor (MHS)

• Randy Wouters, (MHS)

• High school student researchers Angela, Coady, Devon, Logan, Muyang, and Ryan.

Links:

• Quarknet site (and Data Portfolio)

• Cosmic Ray eLab

• CRMD resources page: tutorials, instructions, and software downloads

• Daily feedback survey

Agenda

Tues:

(8-9) Welcome and orientation, parking permits, W-9s, coffee & donuts (Mike and Joe)

(9-10) Connecting to BCS laptops and FIT wifi, cosmic eLab (Mike)

(10-11) Talk: Intro to Cosmic Rays (Mike)

(11-12) Assemble detectors

(12-1) Lunch

(1-2) Detector time

(2-3) Talk: Nuclear physics pt. 1 (George Rybicki, FIT Physics)

(3-4) Detector time

Wed:

(8-12) Detector time (Robert and Mark)

(12-1) lunch

(1-2) Quarknet site accounts and FIT page (Adam); Rutherford PhET activity and worksheet pdf attached below (Mike)

(2-3) Talk: Nuclear physics pt. 2 (George Rybicki, FIT Physics)

(3-4) Detector time

Thurs:

(8-12) Detector time

(12-1) lunch

(1-3) Detector time, make posters

(3-4) Upload and re-start collection; daily survey, and plans for Friday

Fri:

(8-9) Recap and begin data collection

(9-10) Rutherford PhET and Mike’s Rutherford activity worksheet (Mike)

(10-10:30) Sunspot viewing and observatory tour (Dr. Veronique Petit, FIT Physics)

(10:30-12) Classroom activities:

Data Portfolio activity: Rolling with Rutherford variation (Adam)

(12-1) lunch

(1-2) FIT Library (map): tour of the Digital Scholarship Lab (Martin Gallagher, FIT Library)

(2-3:30) Data Portfolio activity: Top Quark variation; CERN LHC video (1.18 m) (Adam)

(3:30-4) Upload and re-start collection; daily survey, and plans for Monday

Mon:

(8-9) Meet at FIT Bookstore (map); recap from last week; Data Portfolio activity: Quark Workbench (Adam); walk back to OPS

(9-11:45) recap learning goals from last week’s activities; HEP videos

• choice of Arduino activities with programming or DC circuits, or laser diffraction (Adam)

(11:45-12) Why should all students take Physics in high school? Here are some reasons.

(12-1) lunch

(1-2) Design an implementation plan; further investigation of the week’s activities

(2-3) Tour of HEP lab, CMS remote operations room, and clean room (Marcus Hohlman, FIT)

(3-4) In-service forms; Experimental Science course description; daily survey; Quarknet workshop satisfaction survey

This year's workshop was centered around fixing and identifying equipment problems. Some paddles do not plateau.  If we had a paddle that did not plateau, we set the rate count to 20-25 Hz by adjusting the voltage on the PDU. Once we constructed the equipment, the system gave error reports. We found that it was very difficult to identify what was working correctly and which item had issues.  After we were able to download the EQUIP software, we were able to identify rate counts and graphs almost during data collection. During our video conference we could not determine why  performance histogram was not working or producing a bad graph.

To identify the problem we had to break down each system into separate units and test each unit individually. We identified each componant as DAQ, PDU, Paddles, cables PAD to DAQ, Cables Paddles to PDU, and power supply. As it turned out the cable from the PDU to the DAQ was bad and the performance study graph was not giving correct readings. The workshop presentations were given by Dr. Noonan, and  Dr Yumiceva. Presentations  were also given by Mr. O'Donnell usng powerpoint from Purdue on particle physics. TED talks about CERN were shown that include Brian Cox. After the presentions, the students decided to document their work  on a blog at quarknetfit2015.wordpress.com

In additon to the blog, the students created posters of their work and posted  them on the quarknet website. The equipment will be stored in Dr Yumiceva's lab for the school year and can be borrowed by teachers and students for future experimentation. Devon Shastri will most likely use the equipment in conjunction with the plasma ball to determine if there is any interference with the counter or the paddles during the muon flux counts. The project would need the use of  a faraday cageo isolate componants being tested.

The pupose of this experiment is to determine if Moisture in the atmosphere will interfere with muon flux rates

It is hypothesized that water will interact with the muons and or slow down the weaker muons before that can be collected and counted. There as the moisture in the atmosphere increases it is hypothesized the muon counts will go down and negative correlation will exist.

In order to collect data, two scintillator paddles were stacked and placed on the 4th floor Of the Olin building at FIT in Melbourne Florida. The rate counts for the top and bottlom paddles were set at 20Hz and 23Hz. Once the rate counts were set, a histogram performance graph was run. Looking at he performancey graph for both paddles the bell shape curves were ideal directly on top of eachother. Once the Paddles were calibrated, an ST 3 30 command was inititated to collect muons for 30 minute intervals. Using the NOAA website and the location of FIT campus the Humidity and dewpoints were collected at the top of every hour. Total Muon counts for the paddles per hour were compared to the average dewpoint and humidity level in that same hour. The data was collected for a week and half every morning and every afternoon. The data was placed on an excel spreadsheet. Using the function tool a correlation coefficient was calculated. If th r-value is greater than an .81 -1.00 there is a positive correlation and is the r-value is a -.81 -1.00 there is a negative correlation. Any value between -.8 to +.8 will result in a non correlation.

In conclusion, after collecting 94 sample points, the r-value correlation coefficient for Humidity and Muon Flux was -0.84, meaning there was a slight negative correlation. Therefore, the data suggest that water in atmosphere seems to reduce the muon flux. In the research students would like to seal and submerge the paddles underwater or surrounded by water tanks. This will allow the students to reduce background noise while c
comparing total counts for each paddle to coincidence rates between the paddles.