Cosmic rays with portable Geiger counters: from sea level to airplane cruise altitudes

Abstract

Cosmic ray count rates with a set of portable Geiger counters were measured at different altitudes on the way to a mountain top and aboard an aircraft, between sea level and cruise altitude. Basic measurements may constitute an educational activity even with high school teams. For the understanding of the results obtained, simulations of extensive air showers induced by highenergy primary protons in the atmosphere were also carried out, involving undergraduate and graduate teaching levels.

GEANT4 simulations of small cosmic ray detection modules based on scintillators and WLS bars

“…Educational arrays made by small detectors distributed over a medium sized area have also been proposed and employed over the last years in different countries. In most cases they are based on scintillators, organized into cluster stations, each station making use of a few detectors placed at small relative distance and operating in coincidence, with a larger separation distance between individual clusters [2].…”

A portable cosmic ray detector for school education

“…This is due to the possibility to perform simple but effective measurements of several basic properties of particles and of radiation-matter interactions, without the need for complicated setups and radiation sources. Various experiences of this kind can be found in literature, such as [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8], where the setups generally focus on the stability, low price and ease of operation of the system. The INSULAB portable cosmic ray detector was designed around the idea of a fully portable setup, from the detector itself to the electronics and the PC data acquisition.…”

Measurement of the cosmic ray rate as a function of the altitude and atmospheric variables using a portable detector

“…At low energies the composition of the primary cosmic rays is dominated by protons with a few percentage of He nuclei while at higher energies the nuclear contribution increases [1]. The existence of such kind of radiation has been known for almost a century but the origin and mechanisms of production of these particles with energies larger than 10 18 eV have not yet been determined and have motivated the development of increasingly sophisticated particle detectors [2,3].…”