Blog: School Year 2005 to Summer of 2007
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School year 2005-2006
In 9th grade, I started the science research program in Sachem High School East.
School year 2006-2007
Going into 10th grade, I switched my project to something more earthly (no pun intended). I decided to try weather and cosmic rays, or more precise, lightning. Earlier on in the year I was able to contact Helio Takai, a scientist at BNL through their website. I also started my experiment while conversing with Helio (see Experiment Set-up, Methods, Purpose, and the Beinging of the Results). Through out the year I obtained some what good data and was able to talk to Helio on a daily basis through e-mail. My teacher mentioned that I should look into working with Helio over the summer, so I did. Helio suggested QuarkNet2007 would be good. I got signed-up and waited to the time when I could start doing research in a real lab with real scientists, and not just in a classroom.
Summer of 2007
June 25, 2007
This is my first day starting the program at Stonybrook Campus. So far it has been a cool experience. We started by learning some information. This is what I learned.
Cosmic Rays were discovered by Victor Hess in 1912 while he was flying in a hot air ballon. The nucleus of an atom travels at great velocity. They are thought to come from the sun, supernovas, and stars.
1 electo-volt = 1.60219 X 10 ^ -19 J The highest energy of a cosmic ray is 10 ^ 20. There are some ways to detect cosmic rays, such as in a ballon, with a satellite, or with a flourecence light.
June 26, 2007
Some of the important things I learned today was...
Physics people are better than biology people.
Bill Gates was the most well known person and Gnarles Barkly has nothing to do with computers.
Cosmic Chris wears the same yellow shirt everyday.
How to play the game,"Taboo"
Some of the other things that I learned...
There are many ways to communicate with other people.
Aim, e-mail, and video conferencing are the most commonly used ones.
Video Conferencing
In the morning we were taught how to set-up a video conference with someone far away, and, (more importantly) someone in the same room!!
When I was at one of the stations, I learned about antennas, which are used for radios and television. There are 2 types of antennas; Omni-directional, and directional. The Omni-directional radiates an equal amount all around, while the directional goes only in one direction. We also learned about receivers, which is a electronic circuit that receives a radio signal from an attena and convert it into sound or images.
We learned about the different types of radios, including the WinRadio, the WR-313, and the GNU Radio. We switched the frequencies to 880 KHz, or kilo-hertz, in order to hear different words and sounds. We learned that you can use different things like AM, and FM, to find the stations we use for T.V. and the radio. (Winradio). And that you need a certain frequency (880 KHz) and Mode, we used AM.
Three things that influence the signal receiving are Adjust automatic Gain COntrol, Attenuation control, and IF Gain control. Different demodulation modes change the output of the atenna. WinRadio
Matlab is numerical computing environment and programming language created by the Mathworks. The last thing we learned was about vectors. There are different ways to make a vector. >>a= [1:1:5] >>b = [1 2 3 4 5] are some ways to make a vector. We learned how to graph a vector using a computer and also to make sounds with different frequencies.
June 27, 2007
In the morning
We had important people come and give speeches to us about the importance of the program we were in. They discussed the way the program started, and how we should continue to work on the projects we were doing. After the speeches, we went outside and had Mexican food and listened to the Mariachi Band.
After the party
John R. Hover came in talk about computers from BNL to talk about the GRID. The GRID is a complete Scheme for Distrubuted Computing. It lets one person go different places.
Authentication and Authorization- Proving who can use one persons computer, then what they can do on it. The program uses certificates (like a drivers license) and Virtual Organization, that allows for use on GRID.
Distributed File Storage and Movement- Allows for a faster time to get data and allows access to many, many computers. It also allows you to tell "who did what where" on your computer for free for prove.
Distributes Computation- The user can define a job: an input, or other and then can submit with GRID and allow to get all the information.
Global Resource Discovery and Brokerage- There are different sites that can run your jobs and find out how busy all the sites are (OSG:GridCat). They also find out where the data is?
Global Resource Accounting- This proves to resource owners that they were able to use their own systems. Also proves to other Virtual Organ.
Why do this? - Usage is very sporatic, it can happen at many different times. Rooms with computers are full and being greatly used at some times, and completely unused at other times. More analysis is able to get done when it is needed.
Ex. Real GRIDS
What types?
Astronomy- image files are big
High Energy Physics
PKI: Public Key Infrastructure- helps the problem of secure communication over an insecure network.
It uses asymmetric cryptography to do this.
Ex.
Want to send word- Secret, with password 5
Step 1: Convert to numbers.
19 5 3 18 5 20
Step 2: Multiply by 5 twice
Step 3: Give to receiver
Step 4: Divide by 5 twice
Receive word-Secret
There are 2 types of cryptography- The first type is symmetric key cryptography, which is shown above in the example. This type of cryptography uses 1 key, which both the sender and the reciever know. The second type is asymmetric key cryptography, which uses two different keys. The different keys are the private key and the public key.
Keys and messages are always represented by numbers. They are always extremely long numbers. This is very important in that it makes it hard for hackers to decrypt the password. Math functions] are always used for encrypting and decrypting.
This source of security is also used by grid softwhere, if you have private e-mail, and secure websites (such as the bank websites and e-bay)
Problem- How do you know that the keys are real?
"All uses give their public keys to a Certification Authority (that also has a key pair), which signs the user's public key with the CA's private key, so anyone can decrypt it with the CA's public key.
A person's public key signed by a CA is a Certificate"
Public CA keys are built into all of the major web browers, such as Internet, Opera, Safari, and Firefox. Private key protected by a passphrase, which is kept encrypted in the user's home directory. There are temporary private keys for the GRID.
June 28, 2007
Black Holes- by Dr. Mike Ingles
In the morning, Astronomer Dr. Mike Ingles came to talk to us about black holes. All of the information we learned today was very interesting, and includes some of the following;
There is no definite way to know if it is a black hole. Black holes also will never be fully formed, because they take a long time (an infinite time) to form. Therefore, there are no black holes that are fully formed.
When the sun dies, it will do so gently, and will also form a red giant. When this happens, it will be very bad for us. The temperature, 6 billion years from now when this occurs, will be around 30,000 K. After the red giant, a white dwarf forms. At this stage, it is very dense. 1.4 M packed into a shpere the size of Earth. There is also a lot more gravity, and no nuclear reaction occurs at this form.
If the white dwarf is big enough a neutron star forms. A neutron star is leftover cores from supernova exlosions. They are very dense (10^12 g/cm^3) and are billions of kelvin. If it has very big (mass > 3 M), force of gravity will be too strong to stop collapse
Gravity wins!!
Gravity is hudge if 3 M or more compressed into as infinitity.
Einsteins Theroy of Relativity- gravity is really the warping of space and time and light is affected by gravity. Gravity- imposes a curvature on space
The surface of a black hole is called the event horizon and stuff going into the center of the black hole is going into the singularity, and it has 0 physical dimentions. Nothing can escape the event horizon or singularity because the speed of light is what you need to be at to get away from event horizon.
Black holes are found by the radiation they give off. When a star falls in the black hole, the black hole gives off an amount of X-rays. That is how then can be detected. Cygnus X-1 was first good candidate for a black hole. Super black holes are thought to be in the center of all galaxies. Even ours!! If you were looking for a black hole, you would want to look for a bending of light.
We then did an example about what would happen if someone went near a black hole, and then into one. Helio Takai was the "astronaut" be picked to go into the black hole. Some of the things that happens is that time slows down from our point of view but speeds up from Helio's point of view. Helio would also become "spaghettified"!! Spaghettified is a technical term that means that Helio would be squeezed and stretched at the same time!! He would also be bombarded with UV rays, X-rays, and Gamma Rays. The only way to travel through black holes, is to make exotic matter to protect you from the radiation and the gravity, and this itself is a theroretical thought because no one knows exactly what exotic matter is.
How a cosmic ray dectector really works...
In the afternoon, we learned how the cosmic ray detector really works. The detector is hooked up to machine that records, and allows us to see, when a cosmic ray goes through the detector. The signal goes to the machine and it reads the data.
When cosmic rays enter the scintillator , voltage comes in and makes a dip in the line. It is like a pulse. It allows you to distinguish between regular waves, and cosmic rays. It also shows the time and pulse and the distance of each cosmic ray as it traveled through the detector. There is also one type that shows when both pulses are on and intersect and when both go off.
The more detectors in the room, the better. A cosmic ray shower would show on more than one detector, while if only one detects something, then it is possible that it is a noise. It is also good to have some stacked, therefore, you can get more accurate results. Have them stacked lets you determine if the detection was really a cosmic ray by see if all of the detectors recorded something. If it showed up on only the top one, it is most likely a noise.
At the end, Helio went through each of the groups, (I am in the lightning group; group 1), and asked how each of them were doing. We got our information off our page.</gallery>
June 29, 2007
Cosmic ray talk w/ Joe
In the morning, Joe talked about what affects the cosmic rays. Some of the information we learned was...
1 cosmic ray / min. would pass through Joe's thumb. Some of the things that affect the cosmic rays are cloud cover, temperature, pressure, solar flares, and the Earth's magnetic field.
If you look for coincidence when looking for a flux, it is better. Stack a couple of detectors and then that will measure the flux. If you're looking for a cosmic shower, then it is better to have four or five detectors spread around the room, like in all four corners, and then if you want, one somewhere else.
Power is the abillity to work, and electrical power is (voltage)(rate)(area).
They found that, after getting the data, they needed to put it into the spread Exel spread sheet to review it. They also needed to work on a graph with a correct X-axis, and Y-aixs. The data they got was not as good, there was little correlation. Barametric pressure affected the cosmic ray shower, but for them, in a negative way. He also said how, not to leave the data entry until the end, do it as you go.
Matt and Matt
After him, two kids, Matt and Matt, talked about what they were doing as undergrad students. They showed the affects of a simepl set-up to find the number of particles, and the pulse size. Some of the question that they asked were... How many particles in each detector? They found no exact number, but they found different things that affect the number. Like the density in the shower.
The last thing before the lunch (which I would be leaving for a doctor's appointment) is work on some of the questions that were postered. We went through them one by one and got ideas from the questions. Some of the things that were brought up was to put camaras on all different schools. That way, during a lightning storm, we would be able to get an idea of where the lightning took place.
Another idea we came up with, is that the amount of cosmic rays are affected lightning, but it could be the other around. Cosmic rays could be the trigger of lightning. This project we can do and find out both anwsers to the two questions.
July 9, 2007
Today I started working at Brookhaven National Lab. So far it is a very neat place. Today I had to get my badge, and boy did that take long. They wanted me to do training, which I thought that I could do at home whenever, so I also had to do online training before I could do any work. I sat in the office part and did the training
for about 2 hours because I did the whole first one and then walked away for about 5 minutes, and it cleared, so I had to do the entire thing again!! Some on the topics that I learned about were security at BNL, emergency response, workers safety, what we can do for the enviroment, and some genreal site information for my benefit. The other course was on cyber security, and taught me how to help prevent hackers getting into my compter, along with what to do if something like that does occur.
July 10, 2007
Groundhogs
On tuesday Dr. Vaccarello, Akshay and I worked on setting up the digital camara outside to watch groundhogs.
We tried to find out what they eat so that we could lure the ground hogs near the digital camera that we had set-up near two of their holes where they had been spotted earlier. I found that they like alfalfa, wild grasses, and any other vegatation. Their diet can also include insects and slugs. We also found out the if there was to be a patch of wild alfalfa, the groundhogs in that area could grow to be about 80 centimeters, (or 32 inches) and about 14 kilograms, (or 30 pounds). However, in the wild where there is not as much alfalfa, or where there is an abundance of predators, the average groundhog is about 40 to 65 centimeters, (17- 26 inches) long, which includes a 15 centimeter tail. The average ground also weighs 2- 4 kilograms, (4.5- 9 pounds).
UFOCapture- digital camera
The digital camara worked very well, with the exception of one thing. When Dr. V left it over night recording, and after for had been X amount of events (or recordings), the file became to big to open. Therefore, we are now working on how to make every recording a single file, that way the one overnight file won't be to big to open if it records all night.
July 16, 2007
Groundhog footage
After working with the UFOCapture program for a good week, we have got good footage of groundhogs, and were able to watch a good amount of their daily activity. We found that they are basically herbivors. We did however, attempt to bait them to the camera by putting an apple and peach infront of the camera. The groundhog, however, did not take the bait, but left it so the bird could ahve it, which I believed to be a crow, to discover.
Camera settings
Among the footage that we were able to obtain, I was also able to fix the problem on how you save each event the camera captures as a seperate file. While in the program, it gives you an option under the title Operation with 4 choices. There is a certain way that you need to check so that under DB, there are small seperate files, instead of one long file that can not be opened.
July 19, 2007
Stonybrook and the cloud chamber
Today I went to Stony Brook to try and use the digital recorder on a cloud chamber. I was able to set-up the camera in a postion that would allow it to record the cloud chamber set-up by Helio Takai and some of the other people that were at the workshop. First, Helio made a movie using his video camera to record the cloud chamber. When he felt he had a good amount of information, he then let me put my camera there and attempt to record it. I was able to get a good amount of recorded data. While mine was recording, Helio had set-up the movie he made just before and put it on the over head screen so that everone was able to watch the trails that occurred (the movie was slowed down, so that we were able to actually see the type of trail left by the cosmic ray as it entered the chamber.
Cloud chamber trails
From what Helio said during his talk to the teachers in the program while I was recording, I was able to learn what type of cosmic ray had entered the chamber by the length and what the trail looked liked when slowed down when looking at it throuugh Helio's camera. I was able to stop the recording I was taking, and put it up so that Helio and the rest of the people could watch it like they did do Helio's video. Some of the information that I learned about was what type of trail I had recorded as it came into the chamber. For example, if the trail that entered was a short thick line, then it was most likely a proton. If it was a long thin line, it would be a muon or [ anti-muon. Lastly a short zig-zag line could be either an electron or positron.
July 23, 2007
"Hadron Hold 'em"
Today at BNL, (Brookhaven National Lab) I learned how to make baryons and mesons, what quarks, anti-quarks, neutrinos, anti-neutrinos, leptons, and anti-leptons are, and what types of each hadron and colors there must be to make the baryons and/or mesons. In the card game "Hadron Hold 'em", (based on the card game "Texas Hold 'em"), that was thought up by Dr. V, there are different point values for each baryon and other particle made. There is also a point system for double annihilation, regular quark annihilation, and lepton annihilation. High card is also played, just in case none of the baryons, leptons, or other particles can be made.
July 24, 2007
Other ways to learn
There are other games being made in order for us to learn about baryons, mesons, and other particles. Today I learned a different way to learn about these thing, basically using a card game based on Rummy, that was made by Candice who also works at BNL. It was a very cool game that helped me learn all about particle physics. It was also very fun and challenging, because there was a ton of different things you could do in order to make a particle, or even a decay for extra points, which is very hard to do.
August 7, 2007
Meteor showers
This week I will be working on the possibility of putting the eye-ball camera in front of a telescope in order to see if we can record the meteor shower that will hopefully be taking place on the 13th of August.
August 10, 2007
Perseids meteor shower
After research on the meteor shower that is going to be entertaining us this week, I have found out the name, place, and other important that will help anyone planning to watch this night time show. The name of the meteor shower is called Perseids, and gets its name from the star constellation Perseus from which it radiates. The perseids meteor shower actually started on July 23, where people in the northern hemisphere (that's us!!) could start to see it.
August 22, 2007
Recording the meteor shower
Before the peak of the Perseids meteor shower I was able to get the camera set-up on the roof of BNL (with the help of my dad and mentor Helio Takai). While I was away, which unfortunatly was during the peak of the meteor shower, the camera recorded a good amount of information, but none of which was about the meteor shower. Hopefully when I look at the material better, I will be able to find something that will help!!
