A Portable Cosmic Ray Detector for School Education

TL;DR

This paper presents a portable cosmic ray detector designed for high school education, featuring a compact setup with scintillators, photomultipliers, and Raspberry Pi for real-time data acquisition and analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, portable cosmic ray detector suitable for educational purposes, integrating hardware and software for hands-on physics teaching.

Findings

Cosmic ray rate varies with altitude and zenith angle.

The detector achieves reliable efficiency measurements.

The system is suitable for classroom and outdoor educational activities.

Abstract

This article describes the design, assembly and characterization of a portable cosmic ray detector, developed by the INSULAB group and suitable for teaching activities aimed at high school students. It consists of a compact aluminum suitcase containing three plastic scintillator modules coupled to photomultipliers, readout by a custom compact electronics chain and powered by a power bank. The modules operate in coincidence and the system records the arrival time of each particle and the time over threshold of the signal of each scintillator module. The data are acquired and processed by a Raspberry PI connected to a touch screen display for online monitoring. The procedure implemented for the determination of the detector efficiency is reported, along with the results of the measurements of the cosmic ray rate as a function of the altitude and the zenith angle, performed in the laboratory and in different locations outdoors.