Speaker
Description
The Extreme Energy Events (E.E.E.) experiment is a strategic project of Centro Fermi dedicated to the study of extreme energy cosmic rays. In particular it exploits a network of muon tracking telescopes constituted by three large area (2x2 vm^2) Multigap Resistieve Plate Chambers (MRPC). These detectors are used in many experiments due to its excellent efficiency and time resolution.
The telescopes are GPS synchronized and are optimized to detect and track the muonic component of extensive air showers initiated by the interaction of primary cosmic rays with the Earth atmosphere.
The E.E.E. Project has an innovative outreach approach: high school students are directly involved in the experiment and they play a primary role.
The detectors are indeed built at CERN by teams of Italian High School students and teachers, under the supervision of researcher of various institutions (Centro Fermi, CERN, INFN). The construction takes five days during which each team school build the three detectors needed for their telescope. During this phase they learn how it is possible to build a particle detector using common materials such as glass, plastic and fishing lines. After construction the detectors are brought in Italy and installed inside their school. Nowadays more than 50 telescopes are installed mostly inside high schools distributed over the whole Italy. After the installation they participate directly to the operation, monitoring of the telescope and to the data analysis by means of masterclasses properly designed.
The E.E.E. Project is still expanding with the aim of enlarging the network and involve more schools in the E.E.E. network.
