Cosmic Chris

He's a senior at Hauppage High School on Long Island, New York. He's Chris, he's Cosmic and he wowed 'em at the National Science Foundation.

The brainchild of Tara Terzella, a physics teacher at Hauppage, Cosmic Chris gets kids and the public thinking about elementary particles around them--and going through them. With help from mentor Helio Takai, Tara built a detector with counters in two-fold coincidence that roughly match the cross-sectional area of a human body. Around these she placed Cosmic Chris, who, with his muon-seeking innards, is the first cosmic ray detector to (sort of) enroll as a student in high school. His activities, though, are not limited to his school; he's visited teacher meetings, public lectures, schools and the NSF. Every place he goes, Cosmic Chris is the big scintillator on campus!