Development of a Muon detector for educational purposes

In the effort to communicate modern physics to a vast audience, the flux of cosmic ray muons is commonly mentioned as the most abundant, naturally available particle/radioactivity source. The detection of atmospheric muons can therefore make up a powerful workbench for educational purposes, allowing many laboratory experiences in different topics of modern physics like special relativity, cosmic rays, statistics and particle detection. Unfortunately, a particle detector being suitable for cosmic-ray muon identification is typically expensive, cumbersome and requires high voltage, thus preventing its widespread application in laboratory sessions based on cosmic ray muons, ex. gr. for undergraduate courses. Here we describe the project for a low-cost muon detector based on a plastic scintillator coupled with silicon photomultipliers, whose signals are acquired and preprocessed via a common FPGA evaluation board. Besides the detector, which was developed by supervised master students, we describe some possible physics measurements.