December+17-December+23

December 17
Once I had switched computers, I had to download the new update of Java and Jing before I was able to manipulate the data on ManyEyes in the form of scatterplots.

Meanwhile, we discussed as a group with Dr. L the way momentum affects the way mass is interpreted by the detector. Looking at my mass graph from last week, Dr. L explained that the variation of masses among the cosmic rays is a result of their different momentums, in fact, rather than different masses; all of their masses are the same because they are all the same type of particle. Further, we discussed how a similar misreading by the detector could explain the reason that Phi1+Phi2 is not working the way we expected.

The mass graph from last week, pictured below, still was a point of interest because its trend is not as expected. I recalled the histograms we looked at earlier in the year and compared the distribution of mass in that set of data to mine; they were incongruous. We would expect the line on my mass scatterplot to be downward sloping as opposed to upward.