B-B student to collect data via hot air balloon

Byron-Bergen High School instructor Briana Wood is facilitating a trip with her physics students on Tuesday, September 19, (weather permitting) in a hot air balloon. On the 19th, one of Wood's physics students will go up in a hot air balloon provided by "Balloons Over Letchworth" and will measure muon flux rates at altitudes up to 3,000 feet.

Two years ago, a detector was taken up in an airplane at altitudes of 4,000-12,000 feet collecting and measuring the same data. Following this experiment, data analysis from this year and two years ago will be performed in the classroom.

Since 1999, Byron-Bergen High School has implemented the PARTICLE (Physicists And Rochester Teachers Inventing Classroom Experiments) Program through the University of Rochester which increases student and teacher knowledge of modern physics, especially elementary particle physics.

This research study is being made possible from a grant through the New York State Section of the American Physical Society.

September 17, 2006