Shower Studies

Frank Vella (Western International High School)

Rumana Begum (Hamtramck High School)

Mike Niedballa (Michigan Collegiate High School)

Dr. Gil Paz (Wayne State University)

1 July 2016

            Our project was based on shower studies. The purpose of our project was to find the most efficient way to detect cosmic ray shower events. Our first method was setting our detectors 4 meters apart. This is the format that we believe to capture the least amount of events in the highest amount of time.  After that, we set our detectors into what would be our smallest area, only 0.3 meters apart, the format we believe to be the most efficient. Then we enlarged the area by 1.4 meters. At last, we increased the area once more. We set each paddle 2.4 meters apart. Our hypothesis was correct! Indeed, the smallest format detected the highest amount of events in the shortest amount of time. The smallest area detected 373 events in approximately 4.85 hours while the large took 64.63 hours. The paddles that were set 1.7 and 2.4 meters apart detected 373 events in 30 hours and 58.5 hours. By learning this, we now know the most efficient format to perform a shower study.