Cos­mic­Watch is an out­reach pro­gram that is being desi­gned to pro­vi­de stu­dents the abili­ty to build their own in-expen­si­ve muon detec­tor. A sin­gle detec­tor cos­ts appro­xi­m­ate­ly 100 USD. Each detec­tor takes a novice high-school stu­dent appro­xi­m­ate­ly 4‑hours to build for the first time and a second detec­tor can be built in about an hour. All suple­men­ta­ry mare­ri­als are available in the Git­Hub repo­si­to­ry: git​hub​.com/​s​p​e​n​c​e​r​a​x​a​n​i​/​C​o​s​m​i​c​W​a​t​c​h​-​D​e​s​k​t​o​p​-​M​u​o​n​-​D​e​t​e​c​tor.

The Cos­mic­Watch Desk­top Muon Detec­tor con­sists of a 5×5×1 cm slab of solid pla­s­tic scin­til­la­tor instru­men­ted with a sili­con pho­tomul­ti­pli­er (SiPM) to detect scin­til­la­ti­on light emit­ted from char­ged par­tic­les as they pass through the scin­til­la­tor. The signal from the SiPM is sent through a cus­tom desi­gned prin­ted cir­cuit board (PCB) which shapes the signal such that a micro-con­trol­ler can mea­su­re the time and ampli­tu­de of the SiPM signal. We use an Ardui­no Nano to mea­su­re the pul­se ampli­tu­de and record the count num­ber, time of the event, pul­se ampli­tu­de, and detec­tor dead time. The thres­hold for a signal from the SiPM to trig­ger the data acqui­si­ti­on can be tun­ed in the pro­vi­ded Ardui­no soft­ware. The detec­tor can be powered by a mini-USB to USB connector.

http://​www​.cos​mic​watch​.lns​.mit​.edu