UIC-CSU Annual Report 2024-2025
Report of QuarkNet Activities at UIC and CSU during 2024-2025
The QuarkNet Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Chicago State provides mentoring, organization, and collaborative structure to students and teachers at six Chicagoland high schools that host cosmic ray detectors. UIC-CSU has provided detectors so that schools can perform physics experiments based on the detection of cosmic ray muons.
Three major research projects were carried during this period involving four teachers and fifteen students: finishing the Moon Shadow experiment; completing the solar eclipse analysis; and preparing a draft of a publication covering our Coronal Mass Ejection project. Eight half-day meetings were held throughout the year at New Trier High School, Downers Grove South High School, and online. The 2025 summer workshop August 4-6, held at Downers Grove South High School, focused on analyses of data and the final draft of the CME paper. Two CRMDs were also plateaued and implementation plans were discussed that could expand cosmic ray activities to larger groups of students.
During the January 2025 AAPT conference in St. Louis students presented three posters on The Effect of Coronal Mass Ejections on Cosmic Ray Muon Flux ref 1 (Figure 1). Total Solar Eclipse Effects on Cosmic Ray Showers ref 2, and Removing the Effect of Barometric Pressure on Muon Flux to Isolate the Coronal Mass Ejection Event ref 3.
During the late spring, results were completed for our Moon Shadow project (Figure 2) and a final poster was created. Data was collected in Indiana by a group of ten students from the schools during the 2024 total eclipse and results were finalized June 2025 (Figure 3).
Our group helped establish a US-Japan high school connection led by Marybeth Senser. Originally a spinoff of our CME project, two QuarkNet groups and a girl’s high school in Japan met several times to share results as well as descriptions of the high school culture. The group plans to meet regularly to discuss a broad range of cosmic ray projects over discord.
Several UIC-CSU teachers and students helped supervise cosmic ray experiments for the IPPOG conference held in May at Fermilab. Attendees from Europe carried out simple counting experiments mentored by our teachers.
A CME paper The Relationship Between Coronal Mass Ejection Intensity and Cosmic Ray Flux was submitted to JURPA4 August 13th; many analysis meetings were held throughout the year, culminating in a final draft during our summer workshop.
Also during the summer workshop, Nate Unterman demonstrated the radio horn his group built to be mounted on the roof of New Trier High School in Northbrook. It will complement their existing cosmic ray air shower scintillation detector. We also discussed the possible use of a scintillation strip tracker to improve the sensitivity of our Moon Shadow project.
Pyramid
Garcia is principal investigator of the NAUM experiment that has built a scintillation tracker to image the interior of the pyramid at Chichen Itza, Mexico. Sample data is hosted on QuarkNet’s e-Lab; available to all users. The detector is complete and has collected data in Mexico City during a commissioning run. We anticipate that high schools in the UIC-CSU Center will participate in the calibration process during the next academic year and possibly in the future use data to improve the sensitivity of their moon shadow measurement.
Mark Adams
UIC Professor Emeritus of Physics
Edmundo Garcia- Solis
CSU Physics Professor
Associate Provost of Research and Grant Administration
Figure 1. Image of poster presented at AAPT Jan. 2025 CME experiment
Figure 2. Final poster summarizing the 18-month Moon shadow experiment
Figure 3. Poster describing final results from the solar eclipse experiment completed June 2025.
References:
- AAPT CME poster 1
The Effect of Coronal Mass Ejections on Cosmic Ray Muon Flux, Evangeline Selking Rex Paster, Kristian Qirko, Zoya Siddiqui, Sydney Stapleton, Maya Zacks, Marybeth Senser, Nathan A. Unterman, Mark Adams
- AAPT Solar eclipse poster 2
Total Solar Eclipse Effects on Cosmic Ray Showers, Sydney Stapleton, Monika Afredeen, Garrett Chong, Aitak, Mosen Harzandi, Anna Halwax, Tara Hecht, Layla Hodgdon, Anna Panferova, Maya Zacks, Marybeth Senser, Nathan A. Unterman, Mark R. Adams
- AAPT pressure correction poster 3
Removing the Effect of Barometric Pressure on Muon Flux to Isolate the Coronal Mass Ejection Event, Maya Zacks, Monika Alfredeen, Anna Halwax, Rex Paster, Kristian Qirko, Evangeline Selking, Zoya Siddiqi, Sydney Stapleton, Marybeth Senser, Nathan A. Unterman, Mark R. Adams
- JURPA paper
The Relationship Between Coronal Mass Ejection Intensity and Cosmic Ray Flux, Kristian Qirko, Rex Paster, Evangeline Selking, Zoya Siddiqui, Sydney Stapleton, Maya Zacks, Marybeth Senser, Nathan A. Unterman, Mark R Adams, submitted to the Journal of Undergraduate Research in Physics and Astronomy.