January 26 Meeting

We will meet to discuss issues concerning calibration and how to proceed with data analysis. Below, there is an agenda that you're welcome to add as far as discussion topics.

This meeting will have two main components. In the morning we will discuss how the data is being uploaded, what is the computer in your classroom doing, what it can be used for, etc. We will also discuss how we will proceed on data analysis and how you can access the data. In the afternoon we will switch gears to calibrate the detectors for those of you that haven't gone through this process. We will have few stations ready so you can accomplish this in 1-2 hours.

• 9:00AM - Welcome
  • Update and Status (Helio)
• 9:30 - Research Experience with the Rochester 3m² detector
  • by Joe Willie, Walter Panas High School, Cortlandt Manor, NY (Reading Material)
• 10:00 - MARIACHI round table
  • How is the data being acquired?
  • How is the data being shipped to the server?
  • What can I do with the computer in the classroom?
  • How can I access the data?
  • Can I run video conference in the classroom computer?
  • How do I join a video conference?
• 12:00 - Pizza Lunch
• 13:00 - What else can be measured with Mariachi detectors?
  • Direction, absorption, velocity, muon decay, etc. (Dima and M. Marx)
• 13:30 - Calibrate your Detector (Dima)
• 16:00 - Adjourn

Gillian's summary of the meeting.

People in the AM Bob Warasila, Gerry Schnal, Mike Inglis, Gillian Winters, Jeff Spahn, Dima Vavilov, Mike Marx, Mike Vaccarielo, Joe Willie, Tom Tomaszewski, Rich Lefferts, John Hover, Jason Hung. PM - Tania Entwistle, Joe Rodichok, Harry Stuckey, Bill Leacock and visit from Joanne Figueiredo (Smithtown West Research), Maria Trinkle (Smithtown East Research) and students Akshay, John, Hochan, Glen.

Helio presented news about the experiment, experiment's status. Tom T. and myself participated in the Columbia U QuarkNet meeting on Jan 12, Joe Sundermier, Tania and myself were in the AAPT meeting in Baltimore.

Thanks to Dima we have now 10 schools that are connected to our server. When the scintillators are plateau'd we will have good data that will lead to the data analysis phase of the experiment.

We talked about Isaac's intel semi finalist project, that is based on the detection of meteors. The antenna he used is the result of the development by J. Newman and Bob Warasila.

• Stony brook is producing oscilloscope data, need to flag SB as such
• Site in BNL needs to be connected - Jeff S and Helio will work on that

Joe Willie (invited) described the work done with the Rochester. One of the detectors he used was a 3 m^2 area scintillator telescope that can detect muons at a rate of 400 Hz. Using this telescope he was able to see correlations with solar flares, etc... It was a very nice presentation. Two effects he has seen is the Forbush effect and GLE (Ground Level Enhancement). Here's some links

http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~jmelvil1/index.html

Also, here is the NOAA space weather data link

http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpmenu/lists.html

what we have learned:

• Very important to have easy access to data
• Important to use common tools for analysis
• We discussed the protocol for analysis - though informal seems to be the way to go.
• We discussed the need of a FAQ, Q&A, etc... We will start this in our Wiki.

Mike Inglis 's comments

The SID station at the SCCC is now operational. Here's the link to SID

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/SID/

SCCC is setting up a telescope to image the sun daily to look for sun spots.

Afternoon scintillation counters

Plateau Rocky Point, Smithtown East, SCCC, Sachem, Ward Melville went to the process of plateau-ing their counters. We could not do all of the counters and few stayed behind.

UPS We distributed UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supplies) for schools that had the detectors. We suspect that some of the glitches we have been observing in the data is due to power glitches.

5. Others

Cloud chamber

We ran the cloud chamber with a mix of liquid nitrogen and alcohol - it is much faster to start ( 5 minutes) and lasted for 2 h with one charge. It is an alternate way to run cloud chambers that is pretty clean. Akshay from Sachem East took videos of the chamber using UFOCapture.

6. Afternoon Visitors

1. Joanne Figueiredo, Hochan, Glen from Smithtown West
2. Maria Trinkle, John from Smithtown East
3. Akshay - Sachem