Improving Undergraduate Laboratory Muon Lifetime Measurements Using Modern Electronics

Measuring the lifetime of muons is an important laboratory exercise for undergraduates to improve their understanding of particle physics and experimental methods.While the muon lifetime experiment hosted at California State University - East Bay (CSUEB) has a working scintillator detector, it lacks a modern readout system. This makes the lab exercise difficult to perform and impedes advanced analysis. Our group has developed an improved data acquisition system based on the Liquid Instruments Moku platform. The system is both easier to use and adds additional flexibility to the data acquisition process. This allows students to perform advanced analysis beyond simply measuring the muon lifetime, such as exploring the energy distribution of scintillator events. These improvements allow students to better develop skills in experimental data collection, data analysis, and presentation of scientific results.