OCTOBER

For this month, I worked on managing the group as we progressed through manyeyes and e-lab. E-lab was a new experience for me, and so it was more difficult to manipulate the data to how I wanted it to look. But with further knowledge, I enjoyed E-lab more than manyeyes. Even though in manyeyes there are thousands of plot options, E-lab lets you cut the data in the graph itself. Last year, I spent a great deal of time trying to manipulate the data in excel just so that I could look at a certain type of plot in manyeyes. Having a cut feature by itself on the graph really made the task simpler, and I was able to find what I needed right away. Of course, what I was trying to get the group to look at were cosmic rays. These particles come down from outer space, and thousands go through us every minute. They are so small and fast to us that we never sense them. On the other hand, the CMS detector in Geneva, Switzerland captures all the particles that go through the detector. Because of a hole that was dug out to lower the parts of the CMS into the ground, the cosmic rays are able to penetrate through the detector as muons and show up in the data. As researchers and scientists, we do not want any data that is not coming straight from the collision. Therefore, a key to working with CMS is being able to cut and fix the data to meet the standards of our final goal. Because we know that cosmic rays come from outer space, it would make sense to look at the particle detector at the y axis (vertical). The particle detector has two ways of sensing the angles at which the particles of the collision come out at. Phi is the angle measured while looking through the z axis, and Eta is the other angle measured by looking from the x axis in. Using the two websites, I was able to explain to the group exactly how all this worked, and as you can see in the CMS Project #1, we were able to manipulate the data to show us the cosmic rays penetrating the CMS detector.