Two exercises about neutrino departure times at CERN

TL;DR

This paper presents two educational exercises related to neutrino departure times at CERN, focusing on statistical errors and potential biases, to engage students with the complexities of neutrino experiments.

Contribution

It introduces simple, practical exercises for educators to illustrate statistical and bias considerations in neutrino time measurements at CERN.

Findings

Analysis of statistical error in neutrino departure times

Hypothetical bias impact on neutrino timing measurements

Educational tools for physics teaching

Abstract

Two simple exercises are solved, which educators can use to awake interest of their students in subtleties of the CERN Neutrino beam to Grand Sasso (CNGS) experiment. The first one is about the statistical error of the average departure time of neutrinos from CERN. The second one about a hypothetical bias in the departure times.