Assignment 5

From MariachiWiki

What is the effect of different materials on cosmic rays?

Using the two scintillator detector systems you attempted to find out the effect of different materials on the counting rates of the detectors. In other words, are cosmic rays absorbed by different materials? These materials included air, concrete, wood, aluminum, and lead.*

• Addendum. On 3/16 you also conducted an experiment with Cosmic Chris using the height of the building.

Some things you might want to include:

1. Your raw data.

2. A histogram of cosmic ray rate vs. material. Be sure to differentiate the data collected from each detector system.

3. Discussion of your findings.

Some questions you might want to incorporate into your writeup:

1. How does changing the orientation (perpendicular or parallel) of the detectors affect the count rate?

2. What determines whether a cosmic ray passes through or gets absorbed? What characteristic of a material might make it a good absorber of cosmic rays?

You can include the pictures of the experiment that were taken. You should be able to find them by going here.
As you know, this is a group effort. Please include the sections described in Assignment 2. As we discussed, everyone should make every effort to post their own work.
Experiment write-up due: 3/21/2006

Blog Entry

As always, be sure to enter your blog entry for today. Lightbulb? Challenge?
Blog entry due: 3/16/2006