Volume 501 - 39th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2025) - Outreach & Education
DIY Extensive Air Shower detector array – a scientific tool & educational toy
J.S. Pryga
Full text: pdf
Pre-published on: September 23, 2025
Published on:
Abstract
The CREDO collaboration studies large-scale cosmic-ray phenomena and aims to attract large public involvement. Currently, thousands of users around the world are using the CREDO Detector mobile application to turn their smartphones into particle detectors and contribute data directly to the CREDO database. % Particle Hunters competitions is organised regularly for several years now to popularize astroparticle physics among young science enthusiasts.
However, scientific value of such data is very limited and each new generation of smartphones makes updating of the software difficult. Those problems emphasize the need for another tool that can be used both for scientific and educational purposes. One of possible designs is an array of small scintillator detectors that can provide not only better data for CREDO purposes but also opportunities for education and science outreach. This work presents such design along with proposed workshops that can be held with young students to teach them about cosmic rays and related physics during a hands-on exercises using real equipment. Thanks to the simple design of proposed device, students can even be actively engaged in their construction. After the workshop, detectors can be used to perform various measurements during classes and to collect data for the CREDO database. Such a device, unlike smartphones, can work in various configurations and provides easy to understand data that can be used to teach students the basics of data analysis.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.501.1248
How to cite

Metadata are provided both in article format (very similar to INSPIRE) as this helps creating very compact bibliographies which can be beneficial to authors and readers, and in proceeding format which is more detailed and complete.

Open Access
Creative Commons LicenseCopyright owned by the author(s) under the term of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.