# The HiSPARC Experiment

## TL;DR

The HiSPARC experiment is a large-scale cosmic ray detection project involving high schools across multiple countries, demonstrating the viability of educational collaboration for scientific research on extensive air showers since 2003.

## Contribution

This work introduces a widespread, educationally integrated air shower array and validates its detection capabilities through simulations and comparisons with established experiments.

## Key findings

- Detector response matches GEANT4 simulations
- Shower direction reconstruction accuracy verified
- Trigger efficiency characterized as function of distance and angle

## Abstract

The High School Project on Astrophysics Research with Cosmics (HiSPARC) is a large extensive air shower (EAS) array with detection stations throughout the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Denmark and Namibia. HiSPARC is a collaboration of universities, scientific institutes and high schools. The majority of detection stations is hosted by high schools. A HiSPARC station consists of two or four scintillators placed inside roof boxes on top of a building. The measured response of a detector to single incoming muons agrees well with GEANT4 simulations. The response of a station to EASs agrees with simulations as well. A four-scintillator station was integrated in the KASCADE experiment and was used to determine the accuracy of the shower direction reconstruction. Using simulations, the trigger efficiency of a station to detect a shower as function of both distance to the shower core and zenith angle was determined. The HiSPARC experiment is taking data since 2003. The number of stations (~140 in 2019) still increases. The project demonstrates that its approach is viable for educational purposes and that scientific data can be obtained in a collaboration with high school students and teachers.