Noam L.V.

12.20.24

This is the last day before winter break. Megan still hasn’t been able to go to the roof but hopefully, she can before winter break ends. The poster session went really well but I was super tired because I was stressing about a test earlier in the day. Dash, Amy, and I are looking into synthetic spider silk. Sort of Spiderman-esque. Megan brought up that I should do analysis of data collected with the cosmic ray detectors over a year ago because nothing was ever really done with the data.

12.12.24

It’s been a hot minute since the last update. The GPS module works but data cannot be uploaded to Quarknet because we are using the wrong DAQ board. We aren’t using our own board and it checks the serial number before approving uploads. I finished my poster last night and it went pretty well. Turns out Joe brought 3 paddles in from West Valley. He never told me and I just found them with Bob’s help. Joe sent me an article about a radio telescope array that is being used to detect cosmic rays.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2405601417303978

11.19.24

Dash and I just set up the GPS through the tech theater space and it seems to be working. I’m testing it right now but I think its all good. We taped it to the window so if it doesn't work I’ll stick it out the window.

11.7.24

I collected data over the weekend and am now uploading it to i2u2. I’m going to then run a half-life study on it. I’m also trying to research why we calibrate the detectors the way we do because I don’t know. It’s been a bit of a slow WISRD work.

10.30.24

I am going to do the half-life study, hopefully, next class. Kids in the painting class came to look at the projects, so I talked to them. I am also re-plateauing the detectors because they got messed up when they were moved before Dark Matter Day.

10.29.24

This entry just deleted itself so I’m rewriting it. Dark matter day went well. The hoffmann apparatus worked well but it was really slow. Next year Jonah and I are going to make a much larger one that should hopefully work much better. I moved the cosmic ray detector to Bobs desk and set it up to collect data for a muon halflife study tomorrow.

10.22.24

I am sick today but this is an update for the past two weeks.

Cosmic Rays:

• Joe and Bob retrieved a detector from some school in Palm Springs and the plan is to test that its working and then give it to UCI or Quarknet

• They can’t find the DAQ board from that detector which is a pretty big issue

• We are planning to run a muon half-life study on what we have set up in WISRD

• the elementary school detectors DAQ board was brought down for testing.

Dark Matter Day:

• Made a first batch of 1M sodium sulfate solution and tested it. There was some weird gunk in it that we think prevented the creation of oxygen in the experiment. We collected hydrogen though and tested it by capturing it in a beaker and lighting it on fire.

• We dumped out that solution and I made a second one. Dash filtered it today (I think) because there were some white flakes in it that we did’t know how they got there.

• Have to buy Tim distilled water because I’ve been using his. I don’t know where to get it though.

9.27.24

Friday Update:

• Dash and I cleaned the Hoffman Aparattus with Tim and will hopefully test it sometime next week (Wednesday maybe?)

• I’m ordering a 35ft ethernet cable and some ethernet couplers so I can set up the GPS on the UCI detectors. Links at the end of this update. The plan is to use the new cable and one coupler to connect the detector to the old radio telescope ethernet that runs to the theater workshop space. I’m going to then connect the GPS antennae to the other end and feed it out the window.

Links:

Ethernet Couplers

35ft Ethernet Cable

9.25.24

UCI CRD Voltages

10:21-10:25am

Appears good based on time over threshhold graphs

Channel 1 (red) 0.77 V

Channel 2 (green) 0.86 V

Channel 3 (blue) 0.88 V

9.24.24

Goals for this week:

• Keep working with the UCI CRD (Channels 2 and 3 look really good, just have to make channel 1 also work)

• Reclean Tim’s Hoffman Apparatus and get those little styrofoam bits out. Possibly test if it works too if I have time

• Find out whats going on with the rooftop CRDs. Joe should be uploading data but he hasn’t communicated well at all.

9.19.24

I’m going to do my inquirer article on wave-particle duality and am currently writing my proposal. Tim, chemistry teacher, showed me a Hoffman Apparatus and I’m going to do more research into what it is and might do it for dark matter day. Dash also wants to do it. I haven’t been able to do much cosmic ray work this week. It seems to still not be that accurate. It also still thinks it’s in east LA and I don’t have a good way of fixing it except setting it up on the deck for a bit.

9.12.24

I left the UCI CRD on over the weekend to make sure everything works but it stopped collecting at some point and I couldn't figure out why. I changed some settings and it’s working now but I don't know for how long. The time over threshold graphs also look very off so I want to do a simple plataue based on the graphs tomorrow. Dark matter day I’m going to do the double slit experiment with some lasers and also dry ice/liquid nitrogen stuff.

9.5.24

I worked with one of the new wisrd kids, Jonah, on setting up the UCI detector. We assembled it on a table and then transferred it to a box in wisrd where we are just letting it run until tomorrow. I have it set up with three panels stacked and a coincidence level of 3. The voltage box is almost certainly not correct and they aren’t plataued but I just wanted to make sure everything is working. The GPS antennae isn’t connecting so it currently thinks its somewhere east of us. Don’t really know where. Either way, that’s a problem for later. Tomorrow I’m going to check on it and then might start trying to plataeu it.

8.30.24

Sorry didn’t do that later yesterday. Doing that now.

8.29.24

First journal of the year so it’s going to be big. End of last year Joe and I worked on plateauing but because of time constraints we just adjusted the voltages until the graphs looked right. Not the most accurate but good enough for them. I reached out to Joe to find out what I should do. We also got a detector with 3 paddles from UCI and I might work on assembling it. There is a new 10th grader who is interested in Cosmic Rays so he’s doing his research we will talk at the mixer next week. I don’t know what’s happening with superconductor but we have to find a place to make it and that’s not really working. I’m going to put some links to resources specifically connected to the cosmic ray group at the top of this. Probably later today though.

5.6.24

Turns out Joe was wrong and was measuring the wrong thing. The detectors are set up and we are going to begin plateuing them now. All data from that will be in the doc from the last journal entry.

4.30.24

Im finally linking my google doc with the steps we took to plateau the detectors. I called Joe today to work on plateauing but he noticed something wrong with detector 2 and is working on it. It seems to be registering the wrong voltage so he is looking at it and will get back to us.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LSTy4-UQ2khncAGDip951i0Qac_HslncCaEY-oT6mhE/edit?usp=sharing

4.29.24

My last update didn’t load so I’m writing it here. The issue with the DAQ board was the barometer so we disconnected it and sent it to Quarknet in Illinois to get fixed. It got sent back after two weeks and we just installed it. Should be working well but we are going to plataue them tomorrow. It will probably take a week or two. We also bought new stepper hats and are in the process of setting them up with the code Ezri wrote. Once that is done I will have to CAD something to hold it together. Poster session was good and I ended up getting a lot of cool space posters. I am going to try and buy a hydraulic press to experiment with and eventually use for superconductor.

1.29.24

Haven’t uploaded it in a while but we are plateauing the detectors. We are having some issues with either the barometer or the power supply but detailed notes are being taken on a separate google doc.

11.28.2023

These are the instructions and steps to upload data from the Raspberry Pi that controls the cosmic ray detectors to the i2u2 website. This has to be done every few days so that the files don’t get too large.

1. Use VNC viewer to access the Raspberry Pi where the cosmic ray software should already be open

2. Disable data collection with the button at the bottom of the main page

3. Note the log file address at the top of the main page

4. Go to the I2U2 website for uploading data (https://www.i2u2.org/elab/cosmic/data/upload.jsp)

5. The username is CRwild and the password is the default wisrd password

6. Select our detector (6136) and the profile “Joe”

7. Select choose file and locate the noted file (It will be in Downloads and then Data)

8. Click upload data

9. Close the Cosmic Ray App

10. Open command prompt and go to the downloads directory (CD download should work, if not ask Megan or I for help)

11. Enter the command to re-open the Cosmic Ray App (You can probably use the up arrow to find it in the command history but it is “java -Djava.library.path=/usr/lib/jni -cp /usr/share/java/RXTXcomm.jar:. -jar EQUIP_18jul2014.jar”)

12. The software should then open and automatically connect to the correct serial port (If it doesn’t the correct one is “/dev/ttyUSB0”)

13. Make sure that data collection is enabled by checking that the counts continue to go up

11.15.2023

We heard back from emailing Joe and the detectors are stacked so any data we have been collecting has been analyzed wrong. I will update the geometry through the VNC today. Joe also says that none of our data has been uploaded or at least has been saved for the past few months. I don’t know how to check it so I’ll look through all the information on the Raspberry Pi.

11.14.2023

Haven’t updated this in a while but I am going to check and analyze all the data from the cosmic ray detectors. The IP for the raspberry pi on the roof is 76.80.63.2::4900 and the name is just “pi”. We have been gathering data assuming that the detectors aren’t stacked but they might be.

Journal entries imported from the previous iteration of wisrd.org

8.23.23

First day of school/first new day of Wisrd. Lukas is in Finland so now I’m PI for cosmic ray stuff. I’m planning to work a lot more and then finish the motors for the detectors. It should take a month or so and then I can move on to collecting data and also other projects. If someone else is interested in cosmic rays I might be like Lukas and have them finish the motors. I want to start another particle physics lab and maybe also get and use new technology stuff.

10.4.22

Forgot to write for a while but this is all that happened. I downloaded the CORSIKA software on my mac but it didn’t work so downloaded it on a raspberry pi and it worked better. Still don’t fully understand the settings but am making progress. I managed to put in a bunch of inputs for it to simulate something but it kind of went wrong on the way. I’m going to do some troubleshooting today to try and find out whats happening. Also might do a bit of research on quarks because I watched a video and the strange ones are weird.

9.16.22

Kind of forgot to write until now but this is what happened this week. Worked on the intel nuc with Leov(didn’t work). Talked with Coltrain about Panoptes and started working with the scribit because Coltrain broke the strings holding it up. Also haven’t read much of the book this week but am about a third of the way in. It’s confusing. Probably have notes in the notebook. Yesterday we learned about the inquirer paper thing and were not sure what to do for it. Was interesting though.

8.30.22

update: I’m now starting to read a book called “The Order of Time” and am going to keep looking at the particle adventure website. Going to probably do this for a while

8.30.22

Last week I researched a bit on exoplanets after I talked to Cole and also researched cosmic rays with some of the info from last weeks entry. A bunch of notes are in my physical notebook. Today I’m going to ask about the Radio Astronomy group that there was an email about. Also do some more research.

8.24.22
Met with Cole to talk about Panoptes

Links to cosmic ray info to look into:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray#:~:text=Cosmic%20rays%20were%20discovered%20by,satellites%20in%20the%20late%201950s. (we can start with wikipedia to help us focus our web searches)

www.cosmology.uci.edu

8.23.22

This is the first day of wisrd and we just spent the entire time learning about what we do. I’m kind of hoping to join one of the earth/space science groups, but I will need to look at and learn about all the groups. Maybe the cosmic ray group? Muons are interesting