Cosmic Ray Telescope

Cosmic Ray Telescope

Miniaci Performing Arts Center

The purpose of this project was to construct an apparatus known as a “Cosmic Ray Telescope” and use it to detect cosmic ray activity by detecting the frequency and intensity of muon emittance by these cosmic rays. Muons are subatomic particles that travel at relativistic speeds and contribute to a harmless amount of “background radiation” originating from outer space. The presence of this radiation was first recorded in 1911 by Austrian physicist Victor Hess during a series of experiments with a Geiger counter in a hot air balloon to detect the radiation at that elevation level. This project has similar objectives except that detection will be done roughly at ground level with a hand- constructed Muon Particle Detector. It consists of two photoelectric tubes connected to a circuit board with a counter on it. The circuit board was hand soldered with all necessary parts. The tubes themselves, responsible for transforming incident muon particles to an electric signal detected by the counter, are physically attached to two light-insulated Lucite scintillation paddles which served as antennas to aid in gathering muon particles. All of this became encased in a hand-crafted plywood case. Due to initial tribulations with the soldering of parts on the circuit board, the research phase was delayed, and as a consequence, data is still being taken and results are being noted. As such, no conclusion has yet been made about the appearance and activity of cosmic rays, but one will be made before this project’s submission into the Research Symposium.