September 4, 2007 - Cosmic Telescope

Plateau Zeroing
Time Start	Time Stop	Time elapsed (min.)	Thresholds on both Scintillators	Singles Count (on top)	Coinc. Counts	Coinc. per minute	Angle measure
1:35 pm on 8/31	1:10 pm on 9/04	5725 min	225	626816	1654	.2889	75 degrees

Cosmic rates measured each hour when telecope accepts cosmics which intesect the eartch surface perpendicularly (defined as zero degrees).

Time Start	Time Stop	Time elapsed (hour)	Singles Count (on top)	Coinc. Counts	Coinc. per hour	[math]\sqrt{N}[/math]	[math](x_i-\bar{x})^2[/math]
1:20 pm	2:20 pm	1	5694	127	127	11.3	121
2:20 pm	3:20 pm	1	4896	136	136	11.6	4
3:20 pm	4:20 pm	1	4655	151	151	12.2	169

Mean [math]\mu[/math] = 138 counts per hour

Instrumental Uncertainty =[math]\sigma = \sqrt{\frac{\sum (x_i - \bar{x})^2}{N-1}} = 12.12[/math] counts per hour

Your instrumental uncertainty is approximately equal to the Poisson sigma ([math]\sqrt{138}= 11.7[/math]) counts per hour.

The cosmic ray telescope counting experiment appears to be following Poisson statistics. See Statistics for Experimentalists