Christopher Pezzella, Vincenzo Morina, Kaitlyn Velardi and MaryAnne D’Angelo

Abstract:

There is an invisible quantum world that constantly surrounds us. At all times we have cosmic particles that are passing through us and the places around us. These cosmic rays as they are called are able to be detected and with our research that was founded at Abilene Christian University, we are able to make these detectors smaller and cheaper than previous methods. The high energy cosmic rays around us will enter into a piece of scintillating glass wrapped in electrical tape to keep light out. Upon entry it will excite the atoms in the glass. When these excited atoms revert back to the ground state, they emit photons. The silicon photomultiplier chip on our PCB board is designed to send out an electrical signal when it detects a photon. This small electrical pulse is then amplified throughout the circuit on the board and read through an oscilloscope. In order to be confident that we are reading cosmic rays, we can stack two on top of each other and when a cosmic ray passes through both of them, we can read two separate signals on the oscilloscope.