From MariachiWiki

My name is Sophie. I was actually born a Sophia, not a Sophie, in the wee hours of the morning on July 15, 1988 in LaGuardia Community Hospital in Queens. I graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City and currently I am a freshman at SUNY Stony Brook. As of this moment my major is undeclared, though I am leaning towards pre-med or pre-pharmacy. I like to swim, eat, write short short stories, read/learn how stuff works, listen to music, dance around my house when no one is home and go to the beach. I was Bill Gates in my fourth grade play about Richard III, but any acting experience ended there. I am addicted to shows like My Super Sweet Sixteen and Juvies, but I can't tell you why. I live in Queens- I've lived there my entire life, yet my mom insists on growing a vegetable garden in our backyard. Even though I love swimming now, I was too afraid to go into the "big kid" pool when I was little. I work at the New York Hall of Science. I'm an explainer; most people remember us as the people who cut up cows eyes. We actually have a cosmic ray detector as an exhibit. This will be my second rotation for 2007WISE187SESSIONII

Contents 1 Journal 1 2 Journal 2 3 Journal 3 4 Journal 4 5 Journal 5 6 Journal 6 7 Journal 7 8 Final Journal/Reflection

Journal 1

February 22, 2007
Today we were introduced to what cosmic rays are and instruments used to detect them. We were given a survey at the beginning, followed by a brief powerpoint presentation and instructions on how to use a scintillation detector. It was really confusing- there was a lot of equipment I have never seen before. We ended class looking at paths caused by cosmic rays in a type of cloud chamber.

I took a picture of the cloud chamber at the hall of science. I understand cosmic rays and and how we detect them much more. I want to see the cosmic ray detector that uses bubbles.

Journal 2

February 27, 2007

Today we were shown a spark chamber. Everytime a cosmic ray passed through, it made a red spark. That was kind of cool. Today, we set up the scintillator. It was very difficult to hook up all the wires (and take them out without breaking them). There were so many wires and a lot of parts of the equipment to hook up. We were introduced to taking data. I learned that we can detect a cosmic ray when a signal is detected by both scintillators. If you compare the counts for each scintillator to the count for the rays that were detected by both scintilators, you can tell that there is a lot of "noise" that is detected. Our group did not get the chance to take data down, but the other group got data for number of signals for scintillator 1, scintillator 2 and the signals that both scintillators for different intervals. They were even able to change voltage and take data down for that. From their information, I plotted the rate of change versus voltage.
I am still confused about how the scinitillator works and I'd like to know more about that.

Journal 3

March 1, 2007
I feel that I am much more comfortable with understanding how a scinitllator works. Today we were introduced to obtaining data online and importing it into excel. I learned how to do a function for an entire column in Excel which was really awesome because I was trying to figure it out for the longest time. After practicing entering data and importing it into excel from the program that collects the data (i forgot the name of the program) we collected data to investigate the efficiency of one of the scintillator counters. We did this by setting up three scintillators, scintillators 2, 3, 1, with the top counter to input 1. We took 60 second trials and compared the coincidence rates for scintillators 2 and 1 with scintillators 2, 3, and 1 while varying the voltage. By comparing the two coincidence, we could obtain the efficiency rating for scintillator 3 (actually the program did that for us). Looking at the graph it looks like the efficiency approachs a limit of 97%, which is a fairly large percentage. I would like to know why the other rays are not picked up by scintillator 3.

Journal 4

March 6, 2007
Today we began brainstorming ideas for the experiments we will be doing for the remainder of our session. My favorite question was, "Do the number of cosmic rays change with location?". It was pointed out to us that the roof above the room we are working in is not as thick as the roof above the old particle accelerator. TO design an experiment, Cosmic Chris would need to be used. Data can possibly be taken outside, in the room outside of the room we work in and the room where we work in. Other suggestions for questions were does the cosmic rays vary with seasons, solar activity, etc (we cant actually do that, though i thought this particular question was really interesting), what happens if cosmic rays hit an at angle (for this question we discussed ways of manipulating the space between counters to determine if a cosmic ray hit an angle versus hitting it straight down) and wheter the number of cosmic rays hitting the earth varied with time of day.

Journal 5

The Kelly Steph & Sophie Project
Today we started our first experiments to determine if the amount of cosmic rays hitting the Earth varied with location/altitude. See following link for more info:

Journal 6

March 12, 2007 Today we learned a little bit about precision and accuracy. It was interesting to learn that as the number of counts increase, the error increases, but precision does as well. Additionally, the average of the counts is the most precise measurement. In the context of our experiment we are looking more for precision because we do not have any set values we are trying to get. We learned how to account for errors by using error bars on excel. Sometimes, there may appear to be a pattern, but there may not actually be- the only variance is because of absolute errors. We found that in our experiment our error was quite small and that the rate of cosmic rays hitting the earth did indeed vary with our different locations, which varied with barriers to the atmosphere
The Kelly Steph & Sophie Project Update

Journal 7

March 15, 2007 Today we took Cosmic Chris to the ground level and outside of the building. We discussed the idea of shielding (i.e. the building) and related it to the rate of cosmic rays. (Increase shielding, decrease the rate of cosmic Rays). See The Kelly Steph & Sophie Project Update for more information about our experiment/project.

Final Journal/Reflection

See Final Reportto learn about the experiment that we did about location and cosmic rays. This rotation was a lot of hard work, both in understanding the material presented and analyzing the results of our experiment. This rotation has vastly increased my knowledge about cosmic rays and Excel. One of the biggest things I learned was using error bars on Excel, which taught me that sometimes data may just be in the range of error and that there is actually no pattern/trend at all. One of the most fascinating things I learned was just how many cosmic rays bombard us every second and that this number changes depending on where you are standing, whether in the physics building at stony brook or the Sahara Desert. I was also surprised that the number of cosmic rays passing through you is a bigger when you are laying down than when you are standing up. (So, if you are worried about Cosmic Rays passing through you, stand up and stay as far underground as you possibly can. This is not necessary, however, because the amount of radiation that we get from cosmic rays is so small it is not actually harmful to us). The hardest part of this course was being shown the scintillator. It felt like we were thrown a handful of information and were not given enough time to process it. It was incredibly difficult the second session when we were told to hook up the scintillator. I think we should have been given more information about cosmic rays, how to detect them, what a scinitillator is/how it works on the first day and more information about the different parts on the second day. All in all, I am glad I completed this rotation.