Annotated Syllabus for Unity of Science AY96-97

First Semester Course Outline

Fall 1996

Second Semester Course Outline

Spring 1997

Questions of the Week

1/29/97
The world looks so different after learning science.

For example, trees are made of air, primarily. When they are burned, they go back to air, and in the flaming heat is released the flaming heat of the sun which was bound in to convert the air into tree. and in the ash is the small remnant of the part which did not come from air, that came from the solid Earth, instead.

These are beautiful things, and the content of science is wonderfully full of them
--Richard Feynman

Think over the "content of science" we have studied so far in this course, and see if you can come up with your own favorite example of a familiar phenomenon which looks very different when viewed from a scientific perspective.

See if you can write up your "beautiful thing" in the space of a few sentences, which, like Feynman's, present the facts of the science while emphasizing the paradox of the view.

2/5/97
When you examine a satellite image produced by remote sensing, you find that surface materials do not reflect all bands of the electromagnetic spectrum the same way. Vigorously growing plants, for example, don't reflect very much visible light, but do reflect rather strongly in the near infra red. Write a paragraph explaining this phenomenon, taking into consideration the answers to the questions below:

Why don't plants reflect much visible light? Which part(s) of the visible spectrum do they reflect least, and why? Why don't they reflect more of the other part(s)?

Would it benefit plants to reflect less of the near infra red? Explain in terms of the photoelectric effect and photosynthesis.

2/12/97
Last semester we created a color image using black and white film. Review that procedure (from the third lab, along with Newton's "prisme" experiments), then compare and contrast how colors were produced there and how they are produced in a false color GIS image.

2/19/97
What does clustering do [in GIS]? Make a case for its usefulness.

Why is it so much harder to find a building on the Mount Holyoke College campus than to find the Summit House on the top of Mount Holyoke (the mountain)?

2/26/97
1. If at all possible, go out and observe Orion. If weather forbids, rely upon your class notes.

2. How do you see the colors: do you agree that Betelgeuse looks red, Rigel looks blue? Is the effect equally striking in both cases? How about most of the stars in Orion? Can you spot Aldebaran and Arcturus, just from the knowledge that they are almost as bright and red as Betelgeuse?

3. How do you explain this experience of color in terms of the black body spectrum theory, and your knowledge of how color perception works?

4. What about the nature of the eye explains that colors tend to be noticeable for only the brightest stars in the sky?

5. If you agree -- or take it on faith -- that the color of Betelgeuse is much more pronounced than that of Rigel, how could you explain that? Think in terms of both the nature of the blackbody spectrum and the nature of the eye.

3/5/97
1. Why is it essential to be able to determine the distances to stars in order to plot a Herzsprung-Russell diagram such as those of Figure 11?

2. Two stars appear to be equally bright; but one is twice as far as the other. Which is more luminous? By how much?

3. What are the properties of atoms which make it possible to conduct a chemical analysis by remote sensing?

4. Why is it essential to know a star's surface temperature very precisely in order to do an accurate chemical analysis?

3/26/97
What is the astronomical evidence that
1. the universe is much older than, say, 10^4 years?
2. the matter of the universe is (in what sense?) uniform in space and time?

Why does it matter? Why should we study such distant objects?

4/3/97
Consider the rings of Saturn. From what sources, processes or events might these rings be derived?

4/9/97
If you look at a two-celled stage animal embryo, both blastomeres appear to be identical. The two nuclei contain all of the same genetic information. Each cell will give rise to many cells, which will, in turn, differentiate into many different kinds of tissues.

1. If these two cells have the same DNA information, why can you get identical twins from some species of animals, and yet in other species, isolated blastomeres only give rise to "half-embryos"?

2. The excitement in the news about Dolly the lamb has been striking. Why is it so amazing that a mature nucleus (from the mammary tissue of an adult ewe) could direct all of development when placed into an enucleated egg? Is this a conceptual and/or philosophical advance for biology? A technical breakthrough? Both?

Annotated Bibliography

Albers, Josef, Interaction of Color, Interactive CD-ROM edition, 1994, Yale University Press, New Haven. A computer version of Albers' famous eye-training exercises, this program demonstrates visual illusions, especially the effect of color contrast in color perception.

Arrhenius, S., 1921. Presentation speech, Nobel Prize in Physics (to Albert Einstein). Nobel Lectures: Physics, 1901-1921. This speech contains an interesting explanation of the photoelectric effect and its theoretical importance.

Asimov, Isaac, 1989. How did we find out about photosynthesis? Walter & Co., NY. A clear, albeit elementary (aimed at middle school), history of ideas about photosynthesis, by perhaps the all-time greatest explainer of science.

Berlin, Brent, & Kay, Paul, 1991. Basic Color Terms: their Universality and Evolution. University of California Press, Berkeley. 196p. It is instructive to think about the relationship between color names and color perception, especially in light of the fact that not all languages have the same number of basic color terms.

Boxhorn, Joseph, 1995. Observed Instances of Speciation. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq%2Dspeciation.html This is a continuously updated, thoroughly documented site listing 30+ instances of speciation observed either in the field or in the lab, and also presenting a clear discussion of the very concept of a species.

Bragg, W.H., 1925. Concerning the Nature of Things. Harper, NY. An account of the atom, as its structure was emerging. That the title is the same as Lucretius title is no small benefit to our class.

Chamberlin, T.C., 1890, The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses, in: Journal of Geology, 103, 1995, pp. 349-354. A classic.

Dennis, Tom. 1997. Seven Universes. © Tom Dennis.

Einstein, Albert E., 1905. Concerning an heuristic point of view toward the emission and transformation of light. Annalen der Physik 17: 132ff. in: A. B. Arons and M.B. Peppard, 1965, American Journal of Physics 33: 367ff. Einstein invents the photon.

Einstein, Albert E., 1940. On Science and Religion. Nature, Nov. 9.,1940, p. 605 ff. An excellent article for generating meaningful class discussion.

Epel, David, 1977. Fertilization. Scientific American, 237:128-139.

Gilbert, Scott, 1991. Developmental Biology. Sinauer, Sunderland, MA.

Gould, Stephen J., 1977. "The Child as Man's Real Father" and "Human Babies as Embryos," in Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History. W.W. Norton & Co., N.Y.

Hubel, David, 1988. Eye, Brain, and Vision, Scientific American Library, New York. One or two chapters deal with color vision, but mostly at a level too technically advanced for the course we taught. This is a good reference for instructors.

Huygens, Christiaan, 1678. A treatise on Light; In which are explained the causes of that which occurs in Reflexion, & in Refraction. Translated by Silvanus P. Thompson, 1912. Huygens proposes that light acts as a wave. We give students some excerpts.

Isaak, Mark 1995. Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution. Http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html. An excellent site. Isaak concisely, clearly, and without condescension explains that: evolution has been observed, evolution does not violate thermodynamics, there are plenty of transitional fossils, that natural selection is not randomness, and the technical meaning of "scientific theory" differs from the every day meaning connoted in the phrase "only a theory."

Juliao, F. & H.C. Butcher IV, 1989, American Biology Teacher 51 (3):174-176. See also Steucek,G.L. & R.J. Hill, 1985. The leaf-disk technique presented in these articles lends itself very nicely to student-designed independent projects.

Legge & Campbell, 1987. Vision of Color and Pattern: Carolina Biological Supply Co., Burlington, NC. a succinct account of nearly everything to do with vision. Very useful for our purposes.

Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe, translated by R.E. Latham, 1951, Penguin Books, London. One of the earliest known arguments for a material view of the world.

Miller, Kenneth, 1988. Energy and Life, Carolina Biological Supply Co., Burlington, NC. a different view of energy capture and use in living things

Nakatani, Herbert, 1988. Photosynthesis. Carolina Biological Supply Co., Burlington, NC. A moderately technical pamphlet on the inner workings of leaves.

Newton, Isaac, 1671, letter to the editor of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 1 (80):3075.

Newton, Isaac, 1718. Opticks; or a Treatise of the reflections, inflections, and colours of light. W. London & J Innys, pub. 382 p. We prepared a handout of annotated excerpts from this book.

Pennisi, E., & Williams, N, 1997. Will Dolly send in the clones? Science, 275:1415-1416. A non-technical article about cloning.

Pierce, Charles Sanders, 1877. The Fixation of Belief. Popular Science Monthly, November 1877. Pierce describes four methods of "fixing belief": tenacity, authority, the a priori method (i.e., metaphysics), and the method of scientific investigation.

Popper, Karl, 1957. The Poverty of Historicism. Beacon Press, Boston. 166 p. We gave the students a quote on falsification of theories.

Ronan, Colin, 1993. Science Explained, Henry Holt Publishers, NY. A beautifully illustrated, lively introductory book, with brief, non-technical explanations of a lot of really neat stuff (great for browsing!) that will get all the students to a minimum starting point.

Rothman, Tony, 1995. Instant Physics: from Aristotle to Einstein, and Beyond. Fawcett Columbine, NY. 242 p. A readable, irreverent, non-technical explanation of the major topics in physics (meant to be read straight through; less useful to excerpt).

Sacks, Oliver, 1995. An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven paradoxical tales, Knopf, New York. A collection of essays on what neurological conditions can teach us about the mind. The case of the colorblind painter is a haunting account of a painter who lost his color vision, most likely due to a stroke.

Sardella, D.J., 1992. J. Chem Ed 69(11):933. This describes how to use density of pennies to teach scientific method; it is a very nice exercise, but seems unconnected to anything else we do in Unity of Science, so we may drop it.

Steucek,G.L. & R.J.Hill, 1985, American Biology Teacher, 47 (2):96-99 See also Juliao,F. & H.C Butcher IV, 1989. This gives the technique for a leaf-disk assay for photosynthesis.

Travis, John 1997. A Fantastical Experiment. Science News, 151: 214-215. A readable article about cloning.

Young, Thomas, 1807. Lecture XXXIX from: A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts, Vol I, pp. 457-471. Available from Johnson Reprint Corporation, The Sources of Science, No. 82. We provide the students an annotated collection of excerpts.