Harry Stuckey - MARIACHI 2008
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Monday July 7
Helio Takai opened the festivities by introducing Peter Koch, the SBU chair of Physics/Astronomy, who welcomed us and expressed his hopes for our positive experiences in the workshop. Helio gave us a short break for food and resumed with each participant introducing her/himself. We were then treated to Helio's first powerpoint featuring an overview of MARIACHI and a screen of dancing hamsters. A short presentation by Graham Glynn on the care and feeding of the new HP tablet PCs followed. These are amazing little computers, which should come in handy at MARIACHI and QuarkNet workshops, as well as in the classes taught in the NSL. Rich Gearns gave a comprehensive overview of using and editing wiki pages. He proceeded to get everyone off to a good start if new to the game and asked the "oldtimers" to update their pages. He also introduced the group project - to use the wiki to compose two "books" on cosmic rays, one fiction and one non-fiction. Time was spent brainstorming and organizing for these chef d'oeuvres. We then broke for lunch.
After lunch, Helio presented his powerpoint #2, an intro to cosmic rays, complete with the Randy Johnson fastball hitting a bird to represent a 10^20 electronvolt collision. Rich had another round of wiki work. Then Helio broke everyone up into small groups for the round robin experiments. I was set up to guide groups in making an estimate of muon flux using the scintillation detectors and varying the area of one detector. One small group activity was completed by each group. The first group had these results Flux data 1. Some groups started to prepare their powerpoint presentations on what they did and learned. We knocked off about 4:30.
Tuesday July 8
The morning began with Rich Gearns overview of EXCEL. Techniques new to me included using the "$" symbol to "lock" a value and using the "paste special - transpose" sequence to switch values in rows to columns, or vice versa. Two open access spreadsheets compatible with EXCEL, OPEN OFFICE and NUMERIC, are available for free download. Then the small groups were reformed to continue with the rotation of experimental activities. The second group to do the flux measurement produced these results: Flux data 2.
After lunch, Rich Lefferts starred in the first of his entertaining demonstration gigs. He reminded participants that science is all around us and science involves doing. This led to a demo with two balls, one which bounced and one which does not. It was almost impossible to tell which would bounce from holding and observing the balls. Once dropped, the difference was obvious. Rich then gave the secret to identify the two from squeezing. Following an admittedly awkward segue, Rich proceeded to a "cool" series of demos using liquid nitrogen. The small groups then continued with their individual work on the rotation experiments. The entire group reformed around 4 PM. Helio discussed the T-shirt contest and the "BUZZWORDS" page. He then encouraged the participants to talk about their experiences with the various experimental activities before releasing us for the day.
Wednesday July 9
The day began by splitting (non-democratically according to Helio) into two groups, one to work on analyzing radar data and the other to do scintillator analysis. I stayed with the scintillator group, led by Gillian Winters, who had spent time on this topic in PHY315/CEB355 and run an activity at Smithtown HS for students. The details of the activity are at AnalysisUsingExcel. The goal was to look for evidence of a solar flare in our cosmic ray data. First, we were each given a set of data to work with. We had to download and combine cosmic ray data and weather data in EXCEL; generate a graph displaying date and time, two-fold coincidence counts, and pressure; and upload the data as a text file (tab delimited) to the wiki. In order to remove the pressure dependent aspects of the coincidence data, the data on either side of the suspected flare event week were combined by different groups and a graph of coincidences vs. pressure was generated. While this was being done, three groups were tasked with researching cosmic rays, solar flares, and atmospheric pressure.
After lunch, Rich Lefferts presented another round of demos. Unfortunately, I missed this because of the LIPTA barbecue at Bill Leacock's in Blue Point. The scintillator group continued their analysis. About 4 PM, both groups reconvened to summarize the day's activities.
Thursday July 10
The morning began with the two interest groups continuing their work. Gillian reviewed Wednesday's tasks and indicated what we needed to do to complete the analysis. In case anyone had difficulty in producing a set of residual counts for the week during which the solar flare occurred, Gillian had provided a set for each site on the wiki. About 10:30, the scintillation group convened to discuss results. The residual data (counts minus pressure effects) appeared to show some effect. Joe Willie thought it might be due to some geomagnetic fluctuation rather than the flare event. He had plotted several weeks worth of residual data. There appeared to be some sort of periodic variation.
At 11 AM, the entire group gathered for a videoconference with Dave Meisel of SUNY Geneseo and the American Meteor Society. He presented several pictures of meteor showers and told us that bright visible meteors occur low in the atmosphere. Bright meteors are usually not detectible by radio methods, and, similarly, radio meteors are not usually visible by eye. The best meteor detection devices are the eye and TV cameras. Radio is not that great.
The afternoon kicked off with Helio filling in the demo slot. He showed the IR camera and then shifted into magnetism stuff. He dropped a niodimium magnet through an aluminum pipe to show the effect of Lenz's Law. The same magnet was used to show diamagnetic effects with cherry tomatos (grapes also work). Water, being a diamagnetic substance, will be repelled by a strong magnetic field. Then, the magnet was used to levitate a "flying saucer" (another pair of magnets sandwiching a poker chip), which was between two sets of copper plates about 2 inches thick. This was an induction effect. Then he dipped an LED in liquid nitrogen to change its color.
After an overview of the available data, students in the scintillation group were asked to consider how they could use the data for investigations. as Helio said, "the sky is the limit". They were also asked to prepare a short presentation. Project ideas included cosmic rays and lightning, the effect of geomagnetic field changes on cosmic rays flux, and changes in muon speed during an electrical storm.
The radio group did some hands on work. The students assembled an antenna under the direction of Bob Warasila.
Teachers met with Helio to talk about using the collected MARAICHI data. One idea involved an extended project for AP classs after the AP exam. Groups could be assigned dat analysis tasks and collaborate with students in other schools. This would involve video conferencing activities. The culmination might be in a mass video conference among all schools to present and discuss results or a one day meeting at BNL or SBU.
Friday July 11
The morning was devoted to individual work and informal discussion. Students were working on their wikis, T-shirt designs, and the cosmic ray books. Teachers did some more analysis or discussed aspects of the project that could be incorporated in class activities and future workshop activities.
After lunch, Helio, with the assistance of Adam Plana, whipped up a batch of his slow-churned liquid nitrogen ice cream. There were some barbed comments, but it all was consumed. Finishing touches were put on the wiki pages and T-shirt designs were submitted. In the open discussion that followed, a few more student ideas for research were related. The radar analysis gruop made a presentation. They had constructed an antenna that could be broken down easily. Some data was presented and described. Most events seem to be meteors. In the near future, a third antenna will be added to the system to enable triangulation. The radio system will switch to a LINUX-based system. Methods to distinguish cosmic rays based on the short duration of the ion trail will have to be developed.
Helio summarized the week in pictures with one of his powerpoints complete with annotations. Finally, the contest winners were announced by Rich Gearns. Students were asked to make a summary entry in their wikis. Following that, Helio thanked everyone who contributed to the workshop and closed the workshop with a reminder to return the tablets.
