PoS - Proceedings of Science
Volume 441 - XVIII International Conference on Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics (TAUP2023) - Outreach and Education
Educational outreach activities on cosmic rays: investigate the correlation between muon counts and atmospheric parameters
D. Miceli*, C. Degasperi, M. Doro, E. Prandini, E. Premrù, V. Di Toro  on behalf of the OCRA Collaboration
Full text: pdf
Pre-published on: February 13, 2024
Published on: March 22, 2024
Abstract
Cosmic rays are energetic, subatomic particles constantly reaching the Earth atmosphere from all
directions. Several technological tools currently available can be used to introduce the students
to research activities in the particle physics field. The Legnaro National Laboratories (LNL) of
the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) host a muon telescope. This telescope
is formed by plastic scintillators and silicon photomultipliers, mostly used for outreach purposes
during the International Cosmic Day (ICD). It is well known that local atmospheric parameters
affect the rate of muons reaching the Earth’s surface. In this contribution, we, along with high
school and bachelor students in Physics at the University of Padova, investigate the anticorrelation
between muon counts and atmospheric pressure. This correlation was measured with the muon
telescope in LNL using the data collected in 2022 and 2023. The results from our analysis confirm
the presence of a significant anticorrelation. Further analyses with a larger datasample allow us
to improve the precision of the result, as well as possibly investigate other atmospheric-related
correlations, such as with temperature and humidity and the variation in time of these correlations.
In addition, we bought a new educational tool: a Cosmic Hunter detector developed by the CAEN
group. We are currently testing the instrument performances and we plan to use this instrument
to confirm our results and explore new possible educational activities for students.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.441.0323
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