Science News

Year 12 Physics

Detecting Muons at Glen Innes High School! As you read this, tiny subatomic particles that originate in the atmosphere, are travelling though your body called Muon's.  Yr.12 Physics students studying  relativity detected these Muons in the classroom using a detector for a 20 minute period and measured 4670 Muons.

Muons have 207 times the mass of an Electron and are unstable and exist for only 2 millionths of a second before they decay. There should not be many Muon's reaching Earths surface but due to time dilation they do! Muon's travel extremely fast 99.4% the speed of light and because of this time slows down for muons and they get to live a bit longer, around 20 millionths of a second. Well done to Jamie, Ethan, Charlotte and Phoenix for getting hands on with Muons and time dilation.