QUARKNET and NSF RET SITE

Julia Thompson

Prof. of Physics, Univ. of Pittsburgh

Adj. Prof. of Physics, Univ. of Missouri at St. Louis (UMSL)

General Description

There is a University of Pittsburgh (Pitt)/University of Missouri at St. Louis (UMSL) Quarknet site at UMSL, funded jointly by NSF and Quarknet. The site and its work is described in more detail below. More detail on Thompson's other research work can be found at: MINOS .

We are exploring how best to introduce a linked grid of cosmic ray detectors in high schools in the greater St. Louis area, organizing any information received in such a way that it can be correlated with information from other sites, locally or even nationally, in order to study the properties of high energy cosmic rays, which give a window on the formation of the universe. The physicists involved are: Julia Thompson and Dave Kraus, Pitt and UMSL

  • A general description of the physics behind the project by 2003 high school teacher participant Steve Grosland.

  • See one of the Nalta websites: (preliminary version or (later version) for some more details of other groups in North America working on similar projects.

  • A brief introduction, selected links, and possible high school student activities have been developed in conjunction with Ms. Julie Breden of Southwestern High School in southern Illinois.

  • We are working with interested teachers and undergraduates from REUPFOM at UMSL in a series of Quarknet workshops, in a wide range of possible high school teacher activities. We expect that each teacher will share a pair of scintillators and recording system which could be used for demonstrating and studying aspects of cosmic rays with their classes. We also aim to site a few GPS time-stamp detectors which can share data on the web with other sites in the aim of studying properties of cosmic rays, especially very high energy ones which carry information about the formation of our universe.

    Some resources are available: list of student projects and selected useful links.

  • A set of notes on making and testing scintillation counters in our setup.
  • PDF and Microsoft Word bibliography developed by 2003 participant Steve Grosland.
  • Web site developed by 2004 participant Jim Small .

    • Work prior to 2003 laid the foundation for our current work.

    In 2003 , these previous investigations were combined and extended in the Pitt/UMSL QUARKNET and RET site . Some pictures give an idea of our activities.

    A Quarknet workshop at UMSL in June, 2004, was held from June 14 - July 2, with some REU student and RET teacher participation before and after the main workshop.

    Data available for analysis has been uploaded to this site and will be studied by our teacher and student collaborators.

    This work is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Quarknet Consortium, but these organizations are not responsible for views expressed on this web site. Last modified June 28, 2004, by J.A. Thompson