Cosmic rays

Abstract

The design and implementation of an automatic data collectionsystem, using an eight channel microcomputer data acquisition unit,is described in the early part of this thesis. The calibration ofthe system and the methods of data collection and analysis arediscussed. The system is used to measure the response of geigercounters and scintillation counters on the passage of cosmic ray muons and electrons. An experiment is described to measure the flux of cosmic ray muons at different zenith angles and to note whether there is any difference between the flux of particles from the east and the fluxfrom the west. This work used a Geiger-Muller cosmic ray telescopeconsist of two layers of Geiger-Muller counters each containingsix identical counters. The rate of coincidence events using acoincidence unit has been measured by using a microcomputer dataacquisition system to record both the occurrence time of an eventand the geiger counter pulse height in each layer of counters. Thedistribution in time separation of the occurrence times of theevents has also been studied. A second experiment is described which used two scintillation counters to measure the density spectrum of electrons at sea level over the range 1 - 335 electrons m(^-2). Discriminators and a two fold coincidence are used and a microcomputer data acquisition system is employed to record the scintillator pulse heights. The experiment used two scintillation counters each of 0.4 m(^2) area and 5 cm thick.