Educational outreach activities on cosmic rays: investigate the correlation between muon counts and atmospheric parameters

Abstract

Cosmic rays are energetic, subatomic particles constantly reaching the Earth atmosphere from all directions. Several technological tools currently available can be used to introduce the students to research activities in the particle physics field. The Legnaro National Laboratories (LNL) of the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) host a muon telescope. This telescope is formed by plastic scintillators and silicon photomultipliers, mostly used for outreach purposes during the International Cosmic Day (ICD). It is well known that local atmospheric parameters affect the rate of muons reaching the Earth's surface. In this contribution, we, along with high school and bachelor students in Physics at the University of Padova, investigate the anticorrelation between muon counts and atmospheric pressure. This correlation was measured with the muon telescope in LNL using the data collected in 2022 and 2023. The results from our analysis confirm the presence of a significant anticorrelation. Further analyses with a larger datasample allow us to improve the precision of the result, as well as possibly investigate other atmospheric-related correlations, such as with temperature and humidity and the variation in time of these correlations. In addition, we bought a new educational tool: a Cosmic Hunter detector developed by the CAEN group. We are currently testing the instrument performances and we plan to use this instrument to confirm our results and explore new possible educational activities for students.