Science in the Schools: The Extreme Energy Events project

The Extreme Energy Events (EEE) project, a cosmic ray physics experiment, is at the sametime an excellent outreach project. Its scientific goal is the study of extended air showers from high energy cosmic rays and extreme energy events by detecting the muon component of the shower. To this aim, a network of muon telescopes has been installed in high schools distributed all over Italy; each telescope consists of three planes of Multigap Resistive Plate Chambers which allow the reconstruction of the muon direction. The search for extended air showers is based on the search for coincidences between telescopes. The project was conceived by Prof. A. Zichichi in order to interest high school students in science and give them a hands-on experience of scientific researc