PHYS-2018
Great Ideas in Science I
Course Web Page

This web page has been set up for the honor students at ETSU taking PHYS-2018 during the Fall 2008 semester and PHYS-2028 during the Spring 2009 semester with Drs. Luttermoser and Harker. Many of the lectures that will be presented to the class in this course sequence will also be available on this web site (see below). These lectures may be presented in a variety of different formats, including PowerPoint and PDF. Note that in order to view PDF (Portable Document Format) files, one needs Acrobat Reader in order to view the document. If your computer does not have this software already installed, you can install it from the link in the last sentence.

Course Overview

Great Ideas in Science is a two-semester sequence that provides an honor student a front row seat on how the various disciplines in science interact with one another. PHYS-2018-001 is the Fall semester course in this sequence and PHYS-2028-001 is the Spring semester course. Through the years, different themes will be covered in Great Ideas in Science. Though Dr. L. will be coordinating the course and providing many of the lectures, we will have other faculty from different departments also providing lectures on different topics.

Academic Year Course Theme
2007 / 2008 Origins
2008 / 2009 Global Changes

Course Syllabus

Course Syllabus for PHYS-2018-001, Great Ideas in Science. You can also download a PDF version of this syllabus by clicking on the appropriate link.

Course Lectures:

Note that as lectures are written and the lecturer wishes to place these lectures online, they will be made available to you below as links to the topics.

Lecturer Topic
Dr. David Harker The Real Scientific Method
Science & Pseudoscience
How to Think about Science
Drs. Harker & Luttermoser How Do Scientists Study/Explain Change?
Examples of Change: Global Warming
Drs. Luttermoser, Harker,
Gardner, & Shanks		 Thermodynamics: Equilibrium vs. Nonequilibrium
Entropy and the Arrow of Time
Special Lecture: Two Centuries of Darwin
Conservation Laws and Change
The Mathematics of Non-Euclidean Geometry
Global Topology of the Universe
The Expansion of the Universe
Stellar Evolution

Student Projects

Project 1: The Scientific Method. Students will break into groups and write a paper and make an oral presentation on one of the topics covered in the first module of this course, such as Intelligent Design, Global Warming, Endangered Species, and stem-cell research.

Project 2: Global Warming Debate. Students will research both the arguments for and against the tenet that humans are responsible for global warming of the Earth. The research done for this project will serve as a preamble for a public address that the will give during the Spring 2009 semester.

Project 3: Topics from Physics and Astronomy. Students will break into groups and write a paper and make an oral presentation on one of the topics covered in the first module of this course, such as the COBE and WMAP missions, the Hubble Space Telescope Key Projects, dark matter and dark energy, the Inflationary Model of the Universe, and the Standard Model of Particle Physics.

Student Readings

Dr. David Harker's Module: The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney.

The web links posted above.

Last modified: December 1, 2008 by D.G. Luttermoser