The International Cosmic Day - An Outreach Event for Astroparticle Physics

TL;DR

The International Cosmic Day is an educational outreach event that engages high-school students worldwide in astroparticle physics through experiments, collaboration, and data analysis, fostering interest and understanding of scientific research.

Contribution

This paper details the organization, implementation, and five-year experience of the ICD outreach event, highlighting its role in science education and international collaboration.

Findings

Increased student engagement in astroparticle physics.

Successful international collaboration among students and scientists.

Publication of student measurement results enhances scientific communication.

Abstract

The International Cosmic Day (ICD) is an astroparticle physics outreach event for high-school students and brings together students and different physics outreach projects from all over the world. Groups of scientists, teachers, and students meet for one day to learn about cosmic rays and perform an experiment with atmospheric muons. All participating groups investigate an identical question. The students are enabled to work together like in an international collaboration, discussing their results in joint video conferences. Analyzing data, comparing and discussing with other "young scientists" gives the students a glimpse of how professional scientific research works. Scientists join the video conferences and give lectures to provide an insight in current astroparticle physics research. Several participating research experiments analyze big science data tailored to the questions addressed by the students and present their results on equal terms with the students. To create a lasting event, proceedings with measurement results of all participating groups are published. Every participant receives a personal e-mail with his certificate and the proceedings booklet. Organized by DESY in cooperation with Netzwerk Teilchenwelt, IPPOG, QuarkNet, Fermilab, and national partners like INFN, the ICD is a growing event with more and more popularity. We present the organization of the event and the experience from five years of ICD.