The Cosmic Ray Observatory Project in Nebraska Conference on Teacher Research Experiences University of Rhode Island April 2005 An education and research experiment for Nebraska high schools Presenters Profs. Daniel Claes and Gregory Snow / University of Nebraska, Lincoln Fr. Michael Liebl / Mt. Michael Benedictine High School, Elkhorn, NE

Overview CROP is in its 5 th year of operation Funded by a $1.34 Million grant, U.S. National Science Foundation Managed by a small team at the University of Nebraska 26 participating schools, about 5 new schools added per year 4-week summer training workshops and 2 academic year meetings Hardware and software 60  60 cm 2 scintillators, PMTs, high voltage supplies from the now-complete Chicago Air Shower Array Data acquisition electronics card developed jointly with Fermilab and QuarkNet LabView control and monitoring program runs on PC at school Inter-school data analysis starting, development underway A small number of inter-school coincidences have been observed

Air shower cartoon, school set-up, participating schools 700 km

November 2004 One-day Participant Meeting Teachers and students from about half of CROP’s schools, all years Typical school team: 1-2 physics teachers, 3-4 students

CROP uses retired detectors from the Chicago Air Shower Array 1089 boxes each with: 4 scintillators and photomultiplier tubes (PMT) 1 high voltage and 1 low voltage power supply Two removal trips (September 1999, May 2001) yielded over 2000 scintillator panels, 2000 PMTs, 500 low and power supplies Sufficient hardware for all Nebraska high schools CROP’s Cosmic Ray Detectors

Summer 2004 Workshop Activities Detector assembly and testing

Summer 2004 Workshop Activities Oscilloscope and DAQ card lessons

Summer 2004 Workshop Activities Practice experiments to be performed at school

Summer 2004 Workshop Activities Detectors return to school

5 Volt DC power To PC serial port Four analog PMT inputs Discriminator threshold adjust GPS receiver input Event counter Programmable logic device Time-to-digital converters CROP data acquisition electronics card Developed by Univ. Nebraska, Fermilab (QuarkNet), Univ. Washington 43 Mhz (24 nsec) clock interpolates between 1 pps GPS ticks for trigger time TDC’s give relative times of 4 inputs with 75 psec resolution

User-friendly, LabView-based control and monitoring GUI Two detectors firing at the same time Data stream for each event Event counter Elapsed run time

Some lessons learned Big variation among schools in independent activity/investigations during school year. Some real successes, some inactive sites Close contact very important during academic year Scheme for replacing/training new students as classes graduate important Classroom integration, affect on curriculum is not automatic. Scheme to guide this is needed. Hardware and software delays create frustration and idleness Hard to recruit for long summer workshops High school schedules are packed, hard to get full participation in academic year Saturday meetings of all participants