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Muon Traffic Relative to the Suns Position Around Earth Aaron McNamara, Vic England, Dustin Clark and Adam Wiessner

University of Wisconsin River Falls Physics Department

Muons· Unstable high energy particles from cosmic activity· Not thought to be from nuclear fission or fusion

Scintillator · Material that remits the absorbed energy from a particle · Usually coupled to an electronic light sensor

The results for our experiment do not show any correlation between number of muon detection accuracies and the time of day. We were not able to acquire the exact data point to be able to create our own graphs for an expected correlation. But the time we detect the maximum number of muons should be at precisely the peak of the solar day. However is seems to more often be around 1pm.

MaterialsOutside ScintillatorsGPSCircuit BoardQNet2Power Supply

MethodThe scintillators are set up directly above each other. The distance is measured between the two and so is the length of each detector. The angles formed opposite sides can then be calculated. This gives an approximation of the best time of sun interaction, when it is most likely to trigger both scintillators. This will give us an idea if the sun is the dominant source of muon activity on earth. Qnet2 is the program used to record the data. Cosmic Ray e-Lab will do the calculation, and set up a readable graph.

http://www.durangobill.com/SwindlePics/SwindleCosmicRays.gif

The results of this lab are inconclusive. Due to possible error in set up , possible error in data manipulation, and error on Cosmic Ray e-Lab this lab is completely inconclusive. No information was able to be rendered from our data.

The purpose of our lab is to test the theory that the sun is incapable of creating muons. We will test this theory by recording the number of triggers during the day compared to the night. Then we will test the number of triggers during the “sweet spot” to verify that it is the sun that is creating the events.

The hypothesis of this experiment is that the sun is the dominant source of moun activity on earth.

list of causes of changes in # of cosmic rayssolar day (roughly 24 hour cycle what we were looking at)11 years Schwabe cycle(increase/decrease in sunspots)22 years Hale cycle(suns poles full revolution of suns poles)

BACKGROUND

PURPOSE AND HYPOTHESIS

MATERIALS AND METHODS RESULTS

CONCLUSIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Scintillator