2018/01/31 by Spencer N. Axani, Katarzyna Frankiewicz, Janet M. Conrad · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #physics.ed-ph #physics.ins-det
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1748-0221/13/03/p03019
11 pages, 8 figures
arxiv created 2018/03/10 · arxiv updated 2018/04/18
The CosmicWatch Desktop Muon Detector is a self-contained, hand-held cosmic ray muon detector that is valuable for astro/particle physics research applications and outreach. The material cost of each detector is under 100 and it takes a novice student approximately four hours to build their first detector. The detectors are powered via a USB connection and the data can either be recorded directly to a computer or to a microSD card. Arduino- and Python-based software is provided to operate the detector and an online application to plot the data in real-time. In this paper, we describe the various design features, evaluate the performance, and illustrate the detectors capabilities by providing several example measurements.