Speaker
Description
Within the Outreach Cosmic Ray Activities (OCRA) program of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), high-school students are involved in hands-on experiments introducing them to experimental astroparticle physics.
We present an outreach activity in which students measure the atmospheric muon counting rate at ground level as a function of the zenith angle using Geiger–Müller tubes operated in coincidence through a Rossi circuit. The setup reproduces a historically significant configuration used in early cosmic-ray studies.
Students are organized into working groups and carry out the full experimental workflow, including detector operation, data acquisition, data analysis, and interpretation. Each group produces a written report describing the measurement and results. In this implementation of the activity, the reports are evaluated through a coordinated single-blind peer-review process among the student groups under the supervision of the organizers.
This contribution discusses the structure and educational outcomes of this approach, highlighting the value of combining historical instrumentation with elements of authentic scientific practice.