2008WkspSummary
From MariachiWiki
The 2008 MARIACHI workshop is over. Let me jot down few fresh memories of a very busy week we had. We started the workshop by having Dr. Peter Koch, chair of the SBU Department of Physics and Astronomy, welcoming the group. After a brief introduction to what the workshop would be, Dr. Graham Glynn (Assistant Provost & Executive Director, Teaching, Learning and Technology) introduced us to the PC Tablets that some of us used for the tutorials and activities during the workshop. The workshop participants were then introduced to the wiki and the group divided into two to participate in the writing of two books: Fictional and Non-Fictional.
The fiction group was clearly smaller with five authors only. Thanks to Oma's impressive artistry the fiction book has very nice illustrations. The non-fiction group worked on a book on cosmic rays. The discussion on the book's outline was led by Jamie Bhalla from Sachem HS North. At the end of the workshop, the book had an structure that with some more work could turn into a nice reference for future people interested in cosmic ray and in particular MARIACHI.
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During the first two days of the workshop different groups took rotations and experimented first hand the different parts of MARIACHI. Rich Gearns, Harry Stuckey, Dima Vavilov, Gillian Winters, Kevin Mernick, Subodh Chiwate, and Bob Warasila led the groups through the setups. Groups with Bob Warasila measured the properties of the antenna currently being used by the experiment. He measured the antenna parameters under different conditions and the resulting information is very useful for the experiment. Gillian led the participants through the measurement of flux as function of angle using the Octagon. Harry Stuckey on the muon flux. Kevin led the exercise on using the radar for source location. Subodh did practical lessons on clock synchronization. Dima Vavilov did measurements of muon velocity. Rich Gearns took Cosmic Chris on a counting spree. During rotations students made measurements and graphed results.
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Wednesday the group were split into two. One to perform cosmic ray analysis and the second radio-activities. The analysis on the cosmic rays were led by Gillian Winters. The cosmic ray group analyzed data to verify if there was a solar flare effect in our data towards the end of April/08. 25 participants analyzed the data, each receiving one section. After two days of analysis the group concluded that on the analysis of one week worth of data had some structure but more days would be required. Joe Willie who was analyzing the data for an extended period of days presented his results. The results both from the group and from Joe show that MARIACHI is acquiring high quality data. The interpretation of what the analysis is telling us will require a lot of research. Joe has also obtained a daily cycle for our data by averaging several days. There is a clear diurnal structure that needs to be understood. Data on events, or four fold coincidences, are also available and further analysis can be performed.
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We discussed possible projects that students can do. There are at least three proposals that were presented. Akshay, Jessica and Dean, presented the concept of measuring the frequency of lightning strikes and correlate with cosmic ray activity. Sam Bryant presented his idea of measuring muon speed during stormy days. Sungsu presented his idea of correlating cosmic ray flux with geomagnetic measurements from USGS. These are all very good ideas and research should be pursued.
The workshop had also the fun part. Rich Lefferts led the way by presenting several liquid nitrogen demonstrations.
We held two contests during the week. The T-shirt design contest and the best wiki contest. The T-shirt design contest showed creativity, imagination and humor. The winners of the T-shirt contest were: Akshay Gupta, first prize, Nicole Cosme and Megan Russ (tie for second place) and John Dodado for the third place. The best wiki winners were, Samantha Dayton, first prize, Jessica Gutierrez, second prize, and Akshay Gupta, third prize. Winners received Itunes gift certificates.
Thanks for all that have blogged and written so many pages reporting on the workshop. It is an invaluable material for future reference as well as to remember what we all did during the week.
Some of the memorable blogs:
