UIC-CSU Annual Report for 2022-2023

The QuarkNet Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Chicago State provides mentoring, organization, and collaborative structure to students and teachers at seven Chicagoland high schools that host cosmic ray detectors. UIC-CSU has provided detectors so that schools can carry out physics experiments based on the detection of cosmic ray muons.  Eight half-day meetings were held throughout the year, as well as a slightly reduced 2023 summer workshop June 14-16, all focused on analyses for the Moon Shadow experiment. Five teachers participated in UIC-CSU activities in 2023: Nate Unterman; Shira Eliaser; Allen Sears; Anthony Valsamis; and Katherine Seguino (now retired).

Moon Shadow

During the year, teachers at four locations have collected data to attempt to measure the shadow of the moon cast in muons at the earth’s surface. Each research group fixed the orientation of telescopes at a unique zenith angle at each school. This avoided tracking the moon’s position at its meridian crossings, however, the moon was in the acceptance of each telescope only 8-10 days per month. The group continues to collect data at four zenith angles: 70, 60, 55, and 26 degrees. This project addresses the largest uncertainty in upper limits of muons coming from the sun determined in our 2017 eclipse project. No astronomy group has reported an observation of the shadow at low energy. If the shadow can be observed, it will allow us to improve our measurement during the next eclipse in the U.S. in 2024. Our Center plans to share our results with other Centers interested in the next total eclipse.

Workshops:

Half-day Sunday analysis workshops occurred Oct. 30, Dec. 4, Jan. 8, Feb. 12, Mar. 19, Aug. 23, Sep. 3, as well as at the summer workshop on June 14-15, 2023. Two to four teachers and between three to eight students attended each of the analysis sessions. Sessions were hosted at three different high schools. Student talks and posters will cover a description of the technique and the report of a null result at the Jan. 2024 AAPT meeting in New Orleans. The value of the upper limit of the search will be finalized during the fall.

Unterman and Adams continue to collect standard data sets for cosmic ray analyses in e-Lab for QuarkNet groups who don’t have a detector. These were created for teachers to use with their classrooms throughout the country during the pandemic and remain very popular.

Pyramid

Garcia is principle investigator of an experiment that is building a scintillation tracker to image the interior of the pyramid at Chichen Itza. Data will be hosted on QuarkNet’s e-Lab; available to all users. We anticipate that high schools in the UIC-CSU Center will participate in the calibration process during the next academic year. Some calibration data may also be used to improve the Moon Shadow measurement. Mark helped Fermilab QuarkNet interns develop the collaboration website over the summer. In addition to describing the progress and goals of the collaboration, it contains 2D analysis capability intended for commissioning, and a 3D event display for the public.