Polarizing Filters Effects of Polarizing Filters on Cosmic Ray Detection Jingyun Fan Kate Gerbich Amber Fetter Eric Glynn
Cosmic Rays Cosmic Rays are showers of subatomic particles that result from a particle entering the earth’s atmosphere and smashing into other particles.
Wave-Particle Duality All objects in our universe exhibit properties of both waves and particles. The reason we can’t detect wave properties of macroscopic objects is their small wavelength.
Wave-particle Duality Photons have a particle and a wave nature depending on how they are measured, according to the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics. This principle, although more often demonstrated by use of photons, applies to all matter.
Polarizing Filters The orientation of the wave crests is called the polarization of the light.
Polarizing Filters Light waves move at many different angles and polarizing filters block light waves coming in at specific angles, depending on the polarization of the filter Polarizing filters are found in Sunglasses Professional photographer’s lenses Etc.
Hypothesis Cosmic rays have a wave quality; thus as we increase the number of polarizing filter layers, less cosmic rays should be detected.
Materials Cosmic ray detector Polarizing filters Clear transparency plastic sheets Stopwatch
Procedures 1. Run control i: detector with 0 interference 2. Run control ii: detector with 1 transparency layer iii: detector with 2 transparency layers iv: detector with 3 transparency layers 3.Run trial i: detector with 1 polarizing filter ii: detector with 2 polarizing filters, 0 deg iii: detector with 2 polarizing filters, 90 deg iv: detector with 3 pol filters; 0, 45 deg v: detector with 3 pol filters; 90, 45 deg
Results
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Conclusion The polarizing filters had no effect on the detection of cosmic rays. Possible reasons are Our polarizing filters are not effective because there were only 3 Polarizing filters block only photons The amount of photons was so small that blocking them have no effect on the detectors