Week+of+March+25+-+April+1

March 25
Today I arrived at Quarknet at 3:45. Unfortunately, due to computer difficulties, I have lost my progress that I have made on this day for the first 20 minutes. Last week was a very helpful exploration of the momentum quantities that had been confusing me. I now understand much greater the notions of why momentum must be present in each direction, as I was previously under the impression that cosmic rays yielded 0 momentum in their data. With the particle coming down through the detector, it is going to pick up the different magnitudes of momentum in the separate directions.

With that understanding, I feel like I am at a sort of roadblock, in that I cannot find where to go next in my research. My previous questions have turned to answers, and I cannot come up with anymore aspects that do not seem to be logical, or that I do not quite understand. It is my understanding that John is working with the aspects of the detector, such as the shape, structure, etc., so hopefully at some point in time we could join that research together to put a 3-D representation of the data.

After talking with Dr. Loughran, I have decided that I will be putting together a sort of story of the cosmic ray research that I have done. In this outline, I will discuss the key observations that have been made, all of the conclusions that have been drawn, as well as include the supporting plots and graphs. From this outline of cosmic ray research, I hope to put together a more official article and web page about cosmic rays that can be referenced. This is my plan looking ahead, and I will begin first by working through this on paper to organize my thoughts.