My BLOG

June 25, 2007

I attended the first day of the Mariachi Summer Workshop extravaganza today. In the beginning of the day we we listened to presentations by Helio and Michael Marx. I found both presentations to be very informative and quite interesting.(Helio is a very funny man!)Both presentations got me ready for some science!! After a short break for lunch we went back to work. Richard Gearns showed us how to "wiki." I found his presentation very helpful since I didn't know much about wikis. He showed us our own pages that I am writing on right now which I think is pretty cool. My own page "wow." He told us about the contest that I know I'm not gonna win because I really don't know any HTML....yet. Anyways after the wiki presentation was over, we split into our groups and started our group work. I was assigned to the group that was given the problem to brainstorm more ways to detect UHECR on earth. First my group researched the older methods to get a feel for how the actual detection works. I was given the the topic of Cerenkov radiation to research. You can see our work at this link Cosmic Ray detections.

June 26, 2007

Today was another exciting day at the Mariachi Lab in Stony Brook University. After listening to a brief Q&A in the morning, we split into three separate groups in order to participate in hands on activities. My group was the first to go to the scintillator station. After a brief overview by Dima and Michael Marx, we split into more groups to go on the computers and try out the software. We were trying to learn about coincidences and the efficiency of the scintillators. A coincidence is when the detectors all record the appearance of the same particle meaning it was detected in four scintillators. Efficiency is the ability of the scintillators to record all the particles that passes through it. Therefore if a detector had 100% efficiency, it would be recording all the particles that are passing through it. We then collected the data from the software at different voltages. Using the collected data we were able to make a graph in EXcel in order to observe the relationship between efficiency, single rate and voltage. After this challenging work we took a lunch. When we came back my group went to the video conference station where we learned about the program Marratech and how it is very useful to Mariachi. After sharing physicist jokes across the video conference we took a tour given by Rich. Although his tour about the "Van De Graaff" was a little hard to follow, I still found it quite interesting.

June 27, 2007

In the morning we were allowed to walk around different stations and have a chance to learn about the different resources available to Mariachi. Myself and my friend Patrick walked around to many of the stations but our first stop was at the Google Map tour with Dr. J. Spahn. He showed the benefits of using Google Maps with the Mariachi program and explained how he was trying to get the page to update real time. We then took a walk over to the Cloud Chamber. Here is a description of a Cloud Chamber. What a amazing site; you could see the cosmic rays in the alcohol mist. You could even see their direction. We then took a stroll over too the C-14 exhibit where we got to use a computer to control objects like a fan and a voltmeter without wires. That was pretty cool. After we saw all the stations it was time for the presentation and ribbon cutting ceremony to begin. After listening to some brief speeches by the president of Stony Brook University and the Director of Brookhaven Labs, the Ribbon was cut and the "Mexican Fiasco" began. We went outside for some very good Mexican food. There was even a Mariachi band playing. After the lunch was over it was time to get back to work. We listen a very good presentation on "The Grid" by John Hoover. The material was a little hard to follow but i obtained the gist of the presentation. After the presentation was over we went back to our main groups to work on the problems given to us. We continued to brainstorm possible new methods for the detection of cosmic rays.

June 28, 2007

Today in the morning we were lucky enough to be the audience of a very special presentation on black holes by Mike Inglis. In his presentation he talked about characteristics of certain stars and their aid to black holes. He talked how they formed and characteristics of them. He made some corrections to wrong common knowledge about black holes. He then talked about time and black holes which was pretty interesting. He explained the different points of view of a black hole and the effects it would have on time. After the presentation was over we went outside to look at a sunspot on the sun which was pretty cool. After looking through the telescope it was time for lunch. When we came back to the lab we split into our three groups and went to the stations from Tuesday. I went to the radio station where we learned about the Winradio program and the Matlab program. I understood the Winradio program pretty well but I found the Matlab program to be a little harder to grasp. But with help I was able to make progress. After my group finished the radio station we went and helped another group with an experiment they were doing with Cosmic Chris. They were testing too see how the effect of concrete on the number of particles that were detectable. We came to a brief conclusion with the help of Cosmic Chris that concrete limits the number of particles that can be detected. After we were done with that experiment, we went back to the lab and talked withe Helio about the future of Mariachi. We decided to brainstorm research topics.

June 29, 2007

This will be my final Bog regarding the summer workshop at Stony Brook since today was the unfortunately the last day. All my future blogs and writing can be found at this link My Lab Notebook. In the morning a few of the physics teachers explained the research that has been going on at their schools to give us a better understanding of the experiments that have been done and what their results were. Then Helio went over the ideas form the brainstorm page and we talked and discussed the topics put forward by people to see if they were feasible or not. After we went over that page we broke for lunch. When we came back we went back into the seven groups to finalize our presentations. After some time had passed we presented our ideas and findings to the other groups. Comments were taken and new ideas put forward. After some closing statements from Helio, we sadly left the Mariachi lab. However I know it will not be the last time I am in that lab.

July 16, 2007

Today Pat and I built FIVE scintillators all by ourselves with the help of Dr. Spahn and Jack. These counters all going to be installed at Brookhaven labs later this summer.Check out the whole day at My Lab Notebook .

July 17, 2007

Today Pat and I started to plateau the five scintillators we built so they can be installed at Brookhaven. See My Lab Notebook .

July 18, 2007

Today I continued to plateau the five scintillators. We are only having problems with one scintillator which seems to need to be fixed. See My Lab Notebook .

July 19, 2007

Today Dr. Spahn and I helped Jack catch up on some work.See My Lab Notebook .

July 20, 2007

Today Dr. Spahn decided I needed to do a small research project on cosmic rays and Atmospheric Pressure. See My Lab Notebook .

July 23, 2007

Today Dr.Spahn talked to me about the right experimental procedures and we helped Matt and Matt get ready to put an array on the lab roof. My Lab Notebook .

July 24, 2007

Today we set up the array on the roof with the help of Dima, rich, matt and matt and Dr. Spahn. My Lab Notebook .

July 26, 2007

Today Dr. Spahn and I tried to fixed the detector that was acting funny. I also started to analyze pressure data. My Lab Notebook .

July 29, 2007

Analyzing data. My Lab Notebook .

July 30, 2007

Analyzing data. My Lab Notebook .

September 7, 2007

Wow, summers over already. Well I had to take some time off of Mariachi in August because I had to complete a ton of Ap work for High school. I left off in July trying to arrange count and atmospheric pressure data in an excel spreadsheet. I realized that analyzing the data was taking way to long and I needed to create a macro. Well I don't know how to write an excel macro so I had to stop my research. Now that I'm back in school I plan on asking a computer teacher for help. After this problem is cleared up I will be able to complete my research and hopefully write a paper on my finding. I also plan to start more research with the help of Dr. Spahn for a eventual project to be entered into the Siemens Westinghouse competition or another competition. I had proposed to Dr. Spahn that we try to supply all the schools with an alternate power supply. It is very common for power to go down in schools due to maintenance. If the power goes out in the schools, all data will be lost for a long period of time since the system will not reboot. It is suspected that we will have some bad storms come trough our area this year will could definitely cause power problems. By supplying each school with this alternate supply of power we solve the problem of lost of electricity due to bad weather. The alternate power supply also provides us with a unique opportunity. If the detectors are attached to an alternate power supply during a hurricane or bad storm in which the power has been lost, Mariachi will be able to obtain some interesting data if alternate power is powering the detectors. What would count rates look like if a hurricane passed over Long Island? I would also like to thank everyone who helped me this summer including, Dr. Spahn, Jack Stevens, Dr. Marx, Rich Lefferts, Dima, Matt and Matt. Thank you for your help and kindness.

September 17, 2007

I recently contacted a computer teacher in my high school regarding the excel problem I have been having. She suggested maybe dropping excel completely and switching to access instead. I am going to run this idea by Dr. Spahn and receive his thoughts on it. I am hoping to clear up this problem soon so I can start to organize the data and write up a report.

September 24, 2007

Finally!!!! I was able to create a macro that allows me to quickly import and sort through data in an excel spreadsheet. Thank you to my science research teacher Mr. Gabrinowitz and friend Cameron Sciotto for helping me.

September 29, 2007

Finished count rates for June 16. Now only have 1 date left before I can start to import data for analysis. Have not found any odd data entries yet. For double coincidences I am seeing a range from about 80-115 in 60 minute interval. For 5 way coincidences I am seeing a rate of about 14-31 counts in a 60 minute interval.

October 11, 2007

At this point all data has been organized and imported into an excel spreadsheet. I now started to organize the data into graph-able intervals for analysis.

October 25, 2007

I have created a graph for the data points of June 13. The graph consists of the time on the x-axis and count rate and pressure rate on a double y-axis. Now I am moving on to the other 4 dates.

November 8, 2007

I have continued organizing and plotting data on a scatter diagram. So far I am seeing a indirect correlation between atmospheric pressure and count rate regarding double coincidences.

November 20, 2007

I finished plotting the data for June 16 and the graph shows a direct relationship between atmospheric Pressure and count rate. Out of the 3 dates already plotted this is the first to show a direct relationship instead of an indirect.

December 3, 2007

Dr. Spahn asked me to try to create macros in excel that would make data importation and organization much easier. He also asked me to collect temperature data as well as the pressure data.

13 December 13, 2007

Dr. Spahn gave me all the count data from July to December for the year 2007. I am in the process of developing macros that can be used to make data collection easier.

December 26, 2007

I've continued to work on the macros. It is a little challenging because excel cannot process a lot of commands in one macro. So I have had to create multiple macros in order to carry out one long command. Not that big a deal, just some more work for me. Another annoyance is that I cannot find a way to have excel recognize file paths without me directly typing in the path of the file. So every time I need a macro to go to a different sheet or date, I have to redirect the query by typing in the file path.

January 11, 2008

The macros are complete, I have created 14 macros. Using these macros I will import count and pressure data for June 17 - Aug 1. These macros also help me organize the spreadsheet to make data analysis easier.

January 14, 2008

Today I imported both count data and pressure/temp data for the whole month of August 2007. I noticed irregular data for the dates August 8-August 16. Therefore I am throwing these dates out. My pressure and temp data have been coming from the site "weather Underground." There is a local weather station in the next town over that I use. For the dates August 11 - August 19. No data was recorded for my regular weather station so I obtained weather data from another close town Shoreham.

January 15, 2008

Continued collecting pressure and temp data from my online source. The data comes in a comma-delimited file so I am simply placing the data in a notepad and then importing the data into excel using a macro. The data is recorded at random times throughout the day, multiple times an hour. I am trying to find a way to simply get average pressure and temp per hour.

January 20, 2008

Met with Dr. Spahn and he asked me to generate the graphs. Pressure on the x axis and count rate on the y. I created two graphs, one with double coincidences and one with 4 count coincidences. I used the average pressure and the average count rate for each day. I created 3 new macros in order to make the generation of the graphs much easier. The graphs included data form June 17 - August 31. Some dates are missing due to weird data or no data at all.

January 22, 2008

I showed my graphs to Dr. Spahn and he asked me to calculate the slope since excel apparently does not calculate a trend line very effectively.

January 30, 2008

I collected pressure and temp data for the month of September. I then calculated the average pressure, 4 count coincidence, and double coincidence. I added the data to my graph. I am beginning to see a very strong indirect correlation between pressure and count rate.

February 5, 2008

February 15, 2008

February 17, 2008

I added a jpg image file of the two graphs I have been working on to the top of my page underneath my personal pictures. As you can see there is a strong indirect correlation between pressure and cont rate. The slopes seem to vary on the two different graphs, I plan to analyze the slopes at a later date.

February 27, 2008

Today I met with Dr. Spahn after school. I told him that I had analyzed and graphed all the data he had given me. So he gave me more data up to February 27 for me to analyze and graph. We also discussed the weird data that I have discovered. There are inconsistencies in the time at which data is being taken by the data acquisition program. Data is being recorded every 60 seconds or very close to every 60 seconds. However sometimes we see data taken every 59 or 61 seconds. A pretty large variation. Some dates take on a trend where after every time data is taken, the next time data is taken, it will be taken in less than 60 seconds. So at the first minute of a date the data may start at the 56th second so the next minute should also be taken at the 56th second, however, it is taken at the 55.7th second. By the end of the date, the 2359 minute, the data could be taken on the 5 th second. A large decrease from 56. Dr. Spahn and I have hypothesized that the DAQ program is using an internal clock that is affected by the processing of the computer.Dr. Spahn asked me to do some calculations and write a brief informal paper describing what I saw in the data.

March 10, 2008

I met again with Dr. Spahn today. I have been having trouble with the calculations and analysis he asked me to do. I now know I must convert the time to seconds and then subtract the differences and add 60 in order to see the variation. I began to look at some of the data.

March 11, 2008

Today I began to import the times of the data for the month of June. I am converting to seconds and then subtracting the seconds from the time before it and adding 60 to their difference. This allows me to see how much the data is varying from 60. I am then creating a frequency chart.Excel creates the bin values for me and then calculates their frequency in the data. I then use this information to create a histogram. Here is an example:This date is pretty normal. There is no large variations as you can see.

March 20, 2008

Here is an example of one of the problems we are seeing in the data. The bin values are the times at which data was taken.

March 22, 2008

Below is an example of the problem we are seeing. In the first column is the date, in the second column is the hour, the third is the minutes and the fourth is the seconds. The 5th column is the time converted into seconds. The sixth column is the variation among the times from 60. So we would expect to see these values very close to 60. You will also notice that some of the minutes are missing and other minutes have been counted twice. I have placed these values in bold. Something is not quite right here.....

March 25, 2008

I'm continuing to import data for the months of June, July, and August. I have come across a few dates in August that have the double count problem, multiple times. I will upload some screen shots of this problem at a later date.

June 2, 2008

I recently have written a paper on the Double Count problem I was observing in the data, this paper can be downloaded at Double Count Data. The paper itself is basically a simple explanation of what I was observing and the results of further analysis. The paper includes graphs and charts that should easily be interpreted. If you have any questions I can be emailed at mikelopez.rp@gmail.com.