Annual Report 2024 - Vanderbilt University **DRAFT**

Submitted by bill.gabella

Published: Thu, 09/05/2024 - 14:20 | Group(s):

Vanderbilt University QuarkNet 2024 DRAFT

Personnel

The Vanderbilt University QuarkNet group is mentored by William (Bill) Gabella. I am stepping down as the mentor at the end of the summer. I advise the teachers and students on the use of the Cosmic Ray Muon Detectors (CRMDs), maintain them, and help with either setup of our loaned out CRMDs or with those that are permanently at a school. I also plan and host the summer workshop for the teachers. For several years we have had the help of several volunteers: Diana Gigante a retired physics teach and long-time QuarkNet teacher, Nick Spurlock a graduate student in our Biomedical Engineering Department, and Dr. Sara Frederick a post-doctoral research in astrophyiscs from our Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Cosmic Ray Muon Detectors

The Vanderbilt QuarkNet has several Center CRMDs: S/N 6181, 6165, 6891, 6851, 6795 are conventional cosmic ray muon detectors. We also have a set of scintiallator detectors that are approximately 4"x16" with non-QuarkNet PMTs and are useful for measuring the attenuation of muons by materials stacked between them. These CRMD sets are routinely loaned to our high school teachers for their club and classroom work. There are several old PC style laptops running Linux and a couple of old Macintoshes also running Linux that can be used to operator the detectors. We also have several CRMDs that are permanently in the schools:
S/N 6850 in Nashville, TN, with James Anderson;
S/N 6892 in Murfreesboro, TN, with Kim Baumann and Gayle Dawson.

The two detectors 6795 and 6851 work very well, and show very steady singles rates. With several new teachers showing interest, these are likely to be given to schools in the area. On a few channels in the other detectors, I do see long-term steady singles rates, for weeks and months, and then sudden changes which may also be stable for weeks. I assume the PMT plus voltage multiplier might be having problems. These need further diagnostics and repairs.

It is my habit to run the detectors, usually at least three of them, all the time. I do upload the files but they are rarely blessed data sets, as the runs are long enough that step changes in the singles rates are quite common.

We are using the Java program Equip for managing the CRMDs running on the Fedora Linux laptops that we have. This works but there are several aspects of it that would be nice to have working and maintained: The GPS mapping and location no longer works. Perhaps an enhancement to output the scintillator/CRMDs geometry in a file format that can be uploaded to eLab. Also a facility to output a spreadsheet of the rise and fall times of complete pulses, like the older LabVIEW program capability, would be helpful. We use a custom Fortran program for this function currently. The Cosmic Ray eLab can also create this file. I strongly encourage the Python development for controlling the CRMDs which I understand is ongoing. That code base would be accessible to many high school students, and college students could be skilled enough in programming to contribute to the project.

Summer Workshop 17-21 June 2024

The main activity of the Vanderbilt QuarkNet Group is hosting the five-day workshop for current group members and interested science teachers. This year the theme was "Muon Decay" and "Muon Speed," or use of the CRMDs themselves. Shane Wood joined us in person for the week and Ken Cecire joined us online to greet the teachers during the workshop. Unfortunately we had only three teachers attend---all three veterans of the QuarkNet program.

Monday is our day for introductions and talks from scientists---news and other scientific enrichment talks. We heard from faculty and graduates students on their research areas. The talks included Nick Spurlock from Biomedical Engineering Department to discuss testing methods including polymerase chain reaction amplification of DNA and novel research methods---tests now more generally familiar since the COVID pandemic. Bill Smith and Krystal Ruiz-Rocha discussed gravitational waves from the LISA and LIGO points-of-view. Will Johns talked about CMS, CERN, and the Pixel Detector in CMS. Aaron Stenmo discussed Quasars and Active Galactic Nuclei, and Roman Beren gave a talk on Black Holes and Theoretical Physics. These talks were well received.

**here edit below

Tuesday stuff.

Wednesday and Thursday more stuff.

Mention Shane teaching us the delta T vs delta L plot for finding the speed as compared to the way I had been teaching just to swap two detectors 4 to 1's position and vice versa. That method does emphasize the systematics, or the delays in the line and electronics as systematics that can be canceled. The plot however allows for more data points to be on the plot, as long as you move one of the two detectors being used for the speed calculation.

Friday and more stuff. We also did the QuarkNet survey any other administration.