OCRA - An International Outreach Project for Cosmic Ray Physics
OCRA – Outreach Cosmic Ray Activities was born in 2018 inside Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) with the aim of collecting in an unique project all the local public engagement activities in Cosmic Ray physics and disseminating them at international level.
The Science
The phenomenon of cosmic radiation, invisible to human eyes, encompasses all the fundamental problems of modern physics: from the origins and evolution of the Universe to the current understanding of the behaviour of known forces up to the intimate structure of matter.
From the study of this radiation all modern theories and knowledge of the world around us were born. On the other hand, cosmic radiation is easily intercepted and can easily be "made visible" through simple telescopes of particle detectors, therefore it represents in itself an excellent teaching laboratory to introduce non-experts, in particular students, to the study of physics and fundamental phenomena of nature. Through the use of a simple detector and with the guidance of the researchers of the center, OCRA aims to make students participate in a real campaign of measurements of the cosmic ray phenomenon.
OCRA's program includes participation in the International Cosmic Day, a three-day internship for high school students and the development and production of instrumentation for educational activities. These activities are carried out at TIFPA and in 17 other locations around the world and coordinated internationally by the DESY collaboration.
TEAM
• Involved external institutions: DESY
• INFN groups: Bari, Cosenza, Catania, Firenze, Genova, GSGC, Lecce, LNGS, LNS, Milano, Milano Bicocca, Napoli, Padova, Perugia, Pisa, Pavia, Roma I, Roma II, TIFPA, Torino, Trieste
• Principal Investigators: Carla Aramo and Sabine Elisabeth Hemmer
• INFN Project: OCRA3M
• Duration: over 3 years
TIFPA Team
• Local responsible for TIFPA: Francesco Dimiccoli
• involved TIFPA people: Andrea Di Luca, Ignazio Lazzizzera, Christian Manea, Marta Missiaggia, Francesco Nozzoli, Ester Ricci, Enrico Verroi.
International Cosmic Days @TIFPA
The experimental activity carried out at ICD regards one particularly interesting target of cosmic ray physics, the measurement of cosmic muon rate.
Atmospheric muons are copiously created in the interaction of energetic primary cosmic particles (mostly protons) with the Earth atmosphere, mainly by the decay of charged pions and kaons. While most of the soft component in the secondary radiation is absorbed by a relatively small thickness of material, muons have a large penetrating power, reaching the sea level and even passing through a large thickness of solid rock.
Apart from the low-energy region, the differential energy spectrum of the vertical secondary muons in a shower exhibits a power-law shape with an average value around a few GeV. The detailed shape and the average momentum of muons depend however on the orientation of the secondary muons with respect to the vertical. As a first approximation, the dependence on the zenithal angle θ of muons roughly follows a cos2θ law, due to the larger absorption of muons in the atmosphere for inclined trajectories.
For further info visit:
ICD2023 at TIFPA
ICD2022 at TIFPA
ICD2021 at TIFPA
ICD2019 at TIFPA
External Resources
OCRA web site
DESY web site
Images