Why Place Muon Detectors at Letchworth State Park?

NOTE:  The detectors were removed from Letchworth State Park on September 30, 2020

Visitors come to Letchworth State Park to marvel at the “Grand Canyon of the East”, carved by the Genesee River, to photograph the three major waterfalls within the Park, and to hike, swim, kayak, raft, camp, picnic, and ponder.  They see rainbows that form in the mist near the Middle Falls, touch the layers of Devonian shales, limestone, and sandstone along the 500-foot high canyon walls, hear white-tailed deer rustling the ground cover under the hemlocks, and smell the musty odor of layers of maple leaves that blanket the forest floor.  Visitors come to Letchworth because they love the natural world, and want to surround themselves in nature. 

But the senses of sight, touch, hearing, and smell do not help the Letchworth visitors to gain an appreciation for the world of subatomic physics.  And that’s a shame, because after all, what’s more natural than a muon!

To inspire people to think about the subatomic world, we are constructing cosmic ray muon detectors and deploying ten of them at different sites within Letchworth State Park in western New York State from July to September, 2020.  The detectors include an OLED display that indicates each muon detected and the current muon flux.  People will encounter these detectors while visiting significant sites within the Park. 

(We should note that there are no more muons falling at Letchworth than at any other place, but Letchworth is a great place to learn about the natural world.)