In partnership with Caltech, students at Southland middle schools are
collecting data on high-energy cosmic rays.
By Duke Helfand
Times Staff Writer
November 26, 2003
Thirteen-year-old Markar Aghajanian is an astrophysicist in the making.
Huddled over a computer at San Fernando Middle School, he is searching for
the source of ultra high-energy cosmic rays.
The eighth-grader is watching colorful graphs and charts flicker across
the computer screen — tell-tale signs of electrons and other elementary particles
screaming down through the atmosphere and striking two pyramid-like detectors
on the roof of the school's computer lab.
With a backpack slung over his shoulder, Markar explains that the energy
for the cosmic ray "shower" originates in high-energy supernovae, black holes
and spiraling galaxies in the far reaches of the universe.
"I feel like I'm a scientist," he says. "Now I know what I want to be."
Markar isn't the only junior scientist working on the heady experiment.
San Fernando Middle School is one of 50 public and private schools and colleges
in the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys that are helping Caltech characterize
the high-energy cosmic rays.
Each school has two detectors, each about three feet high and looking like
the cone of a rocket ship.
The sensors detect speeding electrons, photons and positrons (the positive
counterpart to the electron), and transmit the information to computers at
the schools. Those computers feed data back to Caltech, which has undertaken
the project with help from Cal State Northridge and UC Irvine.
San Fernando Middle School is the latest campus to join the network, known
as the California High School Cosmic Ray Observatory. Caltech plans to expand
to an additional 40 schools over the next six months or so. The detectors
will collect data for three to five years.
Researchers hope the project will provide clues to the development of the
universe and give young people a hands-on introduction to a field they might
choose later in life.
"What we hope to do is give the students tools to learn about science and
to develop their own research projects for reports in class, science fairs
or competitions," said Robert McKeown, a Caltech physics professor who is
leading the research project. "That will hopefully get them interested in
pursuing science as a career."
Among the other schools participating are Birmingham High School in Van
Nuys, Granada Hills High School, South Pasadena High School and Blair High
School in Pasadena.
Schools do not pay to be part of the observatory project; officials say
the estimated $500,000 in costs so far has been paid by Caltech, the National
Science Foundation and the Weingart Foundation.
Caltech scientists say that schools are perfect partners for the research
project. They offer high-speed Internet access. They also are close enough
together to form a kind of net to catch the ultra high-energy cosmic ray
showers that occur when protons from distant galaxies collide with nuclei
in Earth's atmosphere, sending a cascade of particles below.
The showers last about a millionth of a second and present no harm to life.
They can occur as often as once a minute at an individual site but as rarely
as a few times a year across the entire network of detectors, scientists
say.
As research partners, the schools have another advantage: They are filled
with eager young students such as Markar, who are getting a rare opportunity
to explore the wonders of the universe and the complexities of scientific
discovery.
Students from some of the schools get to attend weeklong summer programs
at Caltech, where they learn how the cosmic ray detectors work and get to
assemble the equipment with electric circuitry and soldering irons.
Markar is sold. After school on a recent day, he hovered over the computer
his campus received last week. He didn't understand all of the science at
play or the squiggly lines jumping across the computer screen. But he was
giddy at being engaged in something significant and scientific.
"People say we use 11% of our brain. But we're using 16% by doing this experiment,"
he said. "So we're getting smarter."
Markar's classmate, Guadalupe Becerra, was just as intrigued.
"In my imagination, I figure out how they look — really small," Guadalupe,
13, said of the particles striking the detectors on the roof. "It is really
cool to do this experiment. Even some high schools and adults don't know
what this is."
For San Fernando Middle School science teacher Bart Lennehan, the science
project also has kindled enthusiasm.
He talks excitedly about the prospect that his students will learn about
electrons and protons and the physics of the universe. But this work, he
says, also offers a chance to teach about discovery for discovery's sake.
"Science is not just one person sitting in a back room by himself," Lennehan
said. "It's a collaboration of minds, a group of people trying to generate
experiments and data" that will point to a conclusion.
Across the San Fernando Valley, at Chaminade College Preparatory Middle
School in Chatsworth, students and faculty are also energized by their involvement
in the research.
Maintenance crews have painted the two detectors with the school colors,
orange and blue. The school also has built a little fence and planted flowers
around the sensors.
Principal Christine Hunter said the project had brought science home to
her students, who sign onto the project's Web site to see new data as it
becomes available.
"It's being a part of something that is bigger than your own science project,"
Hunter said of the Caltech effort. "It's not like something they are going
to read about that happened 6,000 miles away. It's happening every day, even
as we speak."
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