Programmable logic device

1. 4200 4-Fold Coincidences / 2 hours Event counter 3000 727 747 Barometric Pressure (mmHg) 10 stage EMI 9256 photomultiplier tube equipment recycled & refurbished from the Chicago Air Shower Array 60 cm 60 cm x 1.25 cm Photomultiplier tubes are working! PMMA (polymethyl methacrylate) doped with a scintillating fluor • Two removal trips (September 1999, May 2001) yielded over • 2000 scintillator panels, 2000 PMTs, 500 power supplies • Sufficient hardware for all Nebraska high schools A Statewide Outreach and Education Experiment in Nebraska Teaches and students trained in intensive workshop experiences The Cosmic Ray Observatory Project Daniel Claes & Gregory Snow Supported by the National Science Foundation Developed by Univ. Nebraska, Fermilab (QuarkNet), Univ. Washington Programmable logic device Time-to-digital converters engaging teams of high school teachers and students in a genuine long-term cross-disciplinary research experience: studying correlations of extended cosmic ray air showers across the state of Nebraska To PC serial port CROP has now trained 36 science instructors and over 150 students, representing 29 school teams, in the hands-on maintenance and use of their own student-built cosmic ray particle detectors. GPS input Four analog PMT inputs 5 Volt DC power • 43 Mhz (24 nsec) clock interpolates • between GPS 1 pps for trigger time • TDC’s give relative times of 4 inputs • with 75 psec resolution Discriminator threshold adjust Typical school setup and schools enlisted During the first 5 years of the project. Data acquisition card and LabView interface Event counter Elapsed run time http://crop.unl.edu 2 detectors firing at the same time Examples of independent student projects Data stream for each event Mount Michael Benedictine High School “The Science Teacher”, November 2001 Marian High School’s Measurement of Cosmic Ray Rate vs. Barometric Pressure Online resources • Statistical errors shown • 1.3% decrease per mmHg Summer 2005 Workshop included an overnight shower array on the lawn http://crop.unl.edu/tutorials/ Online help and tutorials available: Cosmic Ray Observatory Project http://marian.creighton.edu/~besser/physics/barometer.html Collecting Data with CROP DAQ Card Interface • Doing an Efficiency Scan • Disconnect the 4 signal cables from the DAQ card. • These are the cables connected to your 4 detectors. • Open the CROP_DAQ LabVIEW Program. Ben Plowman, Lincoln High School state finalist in the American Junior Academy of Sciences invited to present at the Washington, DC, meeting (February 2005) 3. Click on the "Efficiency" tab make sure the Efficiency Scan button is ON(lit up).4.  Click on "Threshold Scan" tab; make sure the Threshold Scan button is OFF.5. Click "Data Collection Settings" tab and set the timer ON (green button lit).6.  Click the "Data Acquisition" tab and to begin run click on  (upper left corner of menu bar). Rudy Resch and Kent Shirer presented a poster on their follow-up work at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Phoenix, May 2005) and placed fourth in the physics category. On-Line Oscilloscope Cheat Sheets Expansion Plans 100 mile circles centered on selected Education Service Unit (ESU) office locations show how at least 1 of 3 planned annual training workshops can be within a day’s trip of every school in the state. Workshop locations will be rotated among the 19 ESUs during our expansion phase. http://unlhep2.unl.edu/~CROP/oscihomepage.html