Links to Resources on Cosmic Rays for Teachers and Students

This is intended as a resource page for teachers and students. If you have any links that you would like to add, please contact Heather Zorn (hzorn@u.washington.edu) or Jeffrey Wilkes (wilkes@u.washington.edu). Also, if you would like to review one of the books, articles, experiments or websites, please send us your review and we will post it on this site.

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Last updated: 05/09/2001

Informational Websites on Cosmic Rays

Articles on Cosmic Rays

Books on Cosmic Rays

Build Your Own Cosmic Ray Detector

Experiments and Interactive websites

Resource Links

Informational Websites on Cosmic Rays

• The Pierre Auger Project -- An international project to build the largest cosmic ray detector. This website has extensive background information on cosmic rays.

• What are cosmic rays? -- A tutorial on cosmic rays by Leeds University. It has nice graphics and is at the general public's level.
• Cosmic and Heliosphere Learning Center -- NASA website on cosmic rays. It included news, definitions, history and links
• SLAC's Virtual Visitor Center -- Photos and brief information about cosmic rays.
• Imagine the Universe - Cosmic Rays -- A website created by the Laboratory for High Energy Physics at the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. The site is intended for students age 14 and up who are interested in the universe.

Articles on Cosmic Rays

• Cosmic Rays at the Energy Frontier -- A Scientific American article on high energy cosmic rays by Cronin, Gaisser and Swordy, March 1998.
• The Mysteries of Cosmic Rays -- A basic, easy-to-understand article in the CERN Courier.
• Observations and implications of the ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays, by M.Nagano and A.A.Watson, Reviews of Modern Physics, 72:733-767 (July, 2000). If your institution has an online subscription to RMP, you can find the article at http://rmp.aps.org/ . This is a very extensive review of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays.

• Cosmic rays, the most energetic particles in the universe, by J.W. Cronin, Reviews of Modern Physics, 71:S165-S172 (March 1999).

Books on Cosmic Rays

• A Thin Cosmic Rain: Particles from Outer Space, by Michael W. Friedlander (Harvard University Press, 2000). This book is for the general audience.

• Cosmic Rays, by Michael W. Friedlander (Harvard University Press, 1989). An earlier version of the above book. Again, this is meant for a general audience.

• Cosmic Rays and Particle Physics, by Tom Gaisser (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991). This book is at a higher level and is directed toward graduate students and researchers.

Build Your Own Cosmic Ray Detector

• The Cosmic Connection: The Berkeley Lab Cosmic Ray Telescope Project -- A simple cosmic ray detector that can be built by high school teachers and students.
• Counting particles from space -- A Scientific American, Amateur Scientist article in which Shawn Carlson explains how to build a cosmic-ray telescope.

Experiments and Interactive websites

• ASPIRE (Astrophysics Science Project Integrating Research and Education) -- Grades 7-12 - Computer based interactive labs by the Cosmic Ray Group at the University of Utah. There are both general physics labs and a group of labs under the title "In Search of Cosmic Rays"
• Preston College Cosmic Ray Group -- A website developed by a group of physics students at Preston College. This website includes lab write-ups that have good detail and are well written.
• Caltech Senior Physics Laboratory -- Webpage for Caltech's advanced undergraduate course in modern experimental physics. This site includes links to a couple of labs that are useful in learning about cosmic rays.

• Plastic Scintillators and Fast Pulse Techniques -- An older Caltech lab that is no longer a part of the senior physics lab.
• Quarknet - Lead Teacher Institute Projects -- Modern physics projects designed for teachers. The most applicable is the relativistic lifetimes activity. Quarknet is an outreach project through Fermilab.
• Possible Projects Related to Cosmic Ray Studies, by the CosRayHS group -- A list of things to think about and possible experiments related to cosmic rays.

Resource Links

• NASA Space Science Educational Resource Directory -- A searchable database of NASA's space science products that are used in classrooms, science museums, planetariums, and other settings.
• Cosmic Ray/Gamma Ray/Neutrino experiments -- Extensive collection of links maintained by the Max Plank Institute for Nuclear Physics.