Summer Workshop 2021
July 9, 2021 - July 12, 2021
The 2021 summer workshop was held at New Trier High School July 9-12, with masking and distancing protocols in place for COVID. It was attended by four teachers (one virtually) and one student. Mentors Adams and Garcia, and staff Dave Hoppert also participated. Jason Grey, a new energetic teacher from Proviso West, learned about CRMDs and cosmic ray e-Lab analyses from the experienced teachers. He brought his school’s ancient detector hardware for testing. It was decided to ship him a standard CRMD. How to involve more students in these research efforts was also discussed.
Four talks were presented: Dark Matter (virtually by Baxter, Fermilab); NAUM project to image the inside of the pyramids at Chichen Itza (Garcia, CSU); how to use the simple experiment data base (Unterman, NTHS); and Advance Lifetime capabilites (Adams UIC). Experiments explored a simple speed measurment, a muon decay prototype for the g-2 project using AdvanceLifetime tools, and the moon shadow.
The main focus was on assessing the design of the moon shadow experiment. Data was collected in various telescope configurations. There were exciting discussions about the shadow’s location and how to optimize the signal over the normal muon rates. A permanent location was identified for New Trier’s detector. The detailed moon shadow design covered: assessment of two prototype frames, data collection at various zenith angles; discusssion of alignment criteria in order to optimize shadow signal over the noise from the normal muon rate; measurement of the two-muon background at angles near the horizon; database of moon position over time; data format to be used to extract shadow signal; and signal to noise estimates.
The biggest advance was achieved by using a globe to visualize cosmic ray deflections with respect to a detector fixed on the surface, combined with a discusson of a paper reporting on a Monte Carlo of cosmic ray deflection. The group used that information to modify the detector geometry and alignment plans.
Unterman and Adams continue to collect standard data sets for cosmic ray analyses in e-Lab for QuarkNet groups who don’t have a detector or current accesses to their detector. These proved very popular for teachers to use with their classrooms throughout the country during the pandemic.
The Fermilab industrial campus was toured midweek where participants learned about the superconducting magnet facility. The D0 experiemnt was also toured and the Standard Model discussed. Students used the rolling with Rutherford activity to estimate the size of scattering objects, improving their results with several levels of correction factors.