Physics 102: Galileo
Professor: Mark A. Peterson
Class meetings: TTh 8:35-9:50 Clapp 501
Laboratory: Th 1-3:15 Kendade G14
Texts:
Galileo's Daughter, Dava Sobel
Discoveries and Opinions, Galileo
Dialogue Concerning the Two Principal World Systems, Galileo
Two New Sciences, Galileo
The Galileo Affair, Finocchiaro
Course packet, available in physics main office, Kendade 206
Online texts (see syllabus)
This course will have two components: reading/discussion, and laboratory/writing. Of course they won't be separate! Your writing about the laboratory will draw upon our discussions, and our discussions of the reading will draw upon your experience in the laboratory.
Here's what I want from you:
Read assignments carefully and prepare to discuss them -- then join the Tuesday/Thursday discussion.
Use the Thursday laboratory to investigate the week's topic, -- then write a "laboratory essay" telling what you did and what it means. The essay will be due the next Thursday. Choose a style that is pleasant to read and not too ponderous: perhaps a journalistic style, or the form of a letter to a friend who REALLY wants to know what you are doing, in great detail. (Bonus: if you choose a letter form, you could actually send the letter, to your parents, for example.) You may rewrite the essay if it seems unsatisfactory, and initially you should probably plan on at least one rewrite, as we gradually come to an understanding of what the essay should be.
If you can do all that satisfactorily, you have a B+. To get an A of either description, write a final paper that proves you have learned something in this course. There won't be laboratories scheduled in the last two weeks, so, if you wish, your final paper can have an experimental component, and we can use the regular laboratory time to get the experiment together. It would probably be quite easy to follow up one of Galileo's experiments that was not already part of the course. But you may prefer to work out other ideas, ideas coming from the historical part of the course, for example. There are lots of unassigned sections in the books for the course. You could pursue something there.
A recurring theme of the course will be evidence: evidence both historical and experimental. There are mysteries of all kinds here, and quite a lot of evidence, but what do we make of it? And how do we defend our choices? Don't imagine that everything is obvious, and that evidence just tells us the answer. If only it were so simple!
The course will, in a sense, recreate Galileo's life in microcosm. We will start with material he learned as a student, including, where it exists, his response to it. Then we will move on to his own writings, including many that are rather little studied, and in the laboratory we will do experiments like those he did. With any luck we will begin to understand this pivotal moment in intellectual history from the inside.