Relativity Theory

Quantum Mechanics

Black Holes

Quarks

Big Bang

What is the purpose of this course? One answer is to satisfy graduation requirements; another, I hope more satisfying, is to learn something useful for your life. How will the course accomplish this? During this century there have been tremendous advances in scientific knowledge and technology. In everyday life new devices and gadgets are used with competence and familiarity, but usually without any real understanding; on the philosophical level new scientific concepts have had a profound influence on our perception of the universe and on fundamental metaphysical and social questions. Have you ever wondered how a microwave oven cooks, how the television picture travels through space to appear on a TV screen, how the universe began, or what time is? If you have, then this course will give you some answers; if you haven't, maybe this course will stimulate such thoughts and then present some answers!

It is important in this day and age of ongoing debates involving technological and scientific concepts, when governmental budgets are tight and there is great competition for limited resources, that the voters/constituents (that's you!) have an informed view of the topics that enter these debates. This is especially important in fields of high technology where the layman can be at a loss. Of course, some aspects of modern scientific theory can only be expressed in abstract mathematical terms, but these are usually specialized details needed to test and utilize the predictive power of the theory and not to gain a broad understanding of it. My thesis in this course is that everything can be explained to some degree in common language, no matter how esoteric the subject might appear at first glance.

The subject matter contained in this course is treated in helical fashion: A topic will be introduced and related to past topics, then later in the course the same topic will be further discussed and reviewed in more depth and so on, producing a corkscrew type of effect of cyclically returning to a point while boring deeper and deeper.

• posting messages, (and informing me through email that you have), which help to explain or add new perspective to the content of the course, if you report links to web pages you must include a short description of what the contents of links are and how they relate to the current topic. These marks will be added to your Quiz score that covers those units that your messages refer to.
• and by participating in the Mechanics Option extra credit will be added to the Tests.