Fall Semester 2000
Lab Instructor: Andreas Piepke
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Laboratory Project for Fall Semester 2000:
The class is focusing on building a muon decay experiment. The students are in charge of planning
and building a large, 200 liter, liquid scintillation detector, its data taking electronics
and computerized data acquisition. A laboratory budget and access to the department's workshop
are available.
As an introduction the class is starting with a series of short lectures on topics relevant to the project.
These lectures cover: radioactivity such as alpha, beta and gamma-decay, interation of radiation with
matter, radiation detectors and basics of statistical data analysis and error analysis.
As a "warm-up" several experiments on interaction of radiation with matter (using different
radiation detector types), measurement of the half lives of Rn daughters are performed to familiarize
the students with the practical aspects of those measurements.
The students can use the UNIX work station of the HEP group for data analysis and plotting.
A laboratory account with the user name: "ph491" is available. The password can be obtained
in the lab. PAW (run by typing "pawX11") is the recommended analysis platfrom. Two macros:
plot_data.kumac and
plot_histogram.kumac are available at this point to provide an interactive interface with
PAW.
Experiment Descriptions
List of on-line resources: