My Final Product consisted of theorizing on and measuring the speed of muons, quantum particles produced by collisions between cosmic or solar rays with the upper atmosphere. These particles travel at near-luminal speeds, making inquiries into their nature uniquely insightful concerning relativity.
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The measurement was undertaken through use of two scintillating panels, sending data to an oscilloscope and recording it as binary. This experimental setup is depicted below.
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This binary was then converted to usable data, creating several thousands of two-dimensional histograms for each intercepted muon. The amalgamation of every event recorded by one scintillator from the first of four trials is depicted below.
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These events were generalized into four Gaussian distributions, each of which provided a mean and standard deviation for use as data points relating average time spent between the two scintillators to the distance between them. This relationship was then quantified via the slope of a line representing it, with this line depicted below.
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The findings from this procedure, and the theoretical expectations which they verified, were codified in a scholarly article currenly undergoing the publication process, made using LaTeX, the industry standard.
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Scholarly Article(Final Product)
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