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Syllabus: PHY 230 Changing Views of the Universe

Fall-2021

Note: For everyone’s health and safety due to COVID-19, AU continues to move some classes online, and this syllabus is a reflection of such. I will try my very best to maintain the same routine as in our normal face-to-face classroom so that your learning and scheduling are disrupted at their minimum. This syllabus will continue to change with students’ notice as we move forward using the online education system. I will continue to modify this syllabus as needed to accommodate any students who encounters any problems in the process.

Office Hours: MW (9-11 am; 2-3 pm (online only)), T(2-3 pm online only), and by appointment. Office hours can be live face to face or zoom. Office hours may be requested outside of the regularly announced times.

Lectures Room/Office Hours Room: Please go to our class AU Blackboard, the left column below the ”Content”, there is a link to the ”Lecture Room”. This is the link to our lecture room and it is also to where you will meet me during office hours.

Course Description: PHYS 230,“Changing Views of the Universe,” What to make of the universe and our place in it is a big question. This course examines how (western) societies have tackled this question, ranging from the dawn of humanity to present-day, cutting-edge physics. The course focuses on how evolving technologies have literally changed our view of the universe, as well as how societies’ cosmogonic theories have shaped their understanding of the universe and their place within it. The course relies on primary sources and up-to-date physics analyses and students should bring both an open mind and critical thinking. AU Core Habits of Mind: Socio-Historical Inquiry. Usually Offered: fall and spring.

As we conduct our critical analysis we will also come to understand the role that science (in general) and physics and astronomy (in particular) has and continues to play in terms of our conceptions of the Universe. Because our task is almost infinitely large, we will focus on two interrelated course themes:

● Creation: How we have comprehended (and are comprehending) the origin of the Cosmos, and how that understanding affected their view of the Cosmos, and most importantly, their place within it. We will begin our critical analysis with a look at ancient worlds and their respective cosmologies. Then we will move forward, considering significant historical periods as we build our conceptions of the Universe and the Cosmos.

● Technology: How evolving technologies (e.g., telescopes) have and are changing the way in which we see the Cosmos, and thus, have and are changing our understanding of the Cosmos.

The various readings and course activities will draw from many areas (including but not limited to: history, philosophy, religion, mathematics, and of course, physics and astronomy). We will explore many aspects of science as we look to understand the origin and workings of the Universe. To that end our explorations will involve the study of ancient classical philosophers; the Scientific Revolution and the great minds of that time, implications of modern physics including relativity and quantum physics, as well as more recent developments in Cosmology.

Course Placement In The AU Core - The AU Core Curriculum, AU’s inquiry-based liberal arts ed-ucations, has been designed to challenge you to put your curiosity to use inside and outside of the classroom. The AU Core fosters agile thinking that prepares you to engage in a complex, constantly changing world. It begins with a first-year experience and foundational skills, highlights essential habits of mind, then integrates these skills and habits with a student’s individual major, and culminates in a capstone experience. At each stage, the AU Core offers sustained attention to equity, diversity, and inclusion. The three components of the AU Core Curriculum include foundation courses, Habits of Mind courses, and integrative courses.

Habits Of Mind - Changing Views of the Universe is a Habits of Mind (HoM) course in the Socio-Historical Inquiry portion of the AU Core. Broadly, HoM courses are designed to teach you to develop questions, employ methodologies, and create new knowledge. AU faculty believe that inquiry goes hand-in-hand with the curiosity that characterizes life-long learners. The HoM are intended to help you broaden your knowledge base and prepare you to draw connections between your Core experience, classes in your majors/minors, and in your lives after you leave AU. It is hoped that the critical analytical approaches we’ll use to enhance our habits of mind and simultaneously expand our understanding of the Cosmos will be relevant across many different disciplines and areas of study.

All HoM courses in the Socio-Historical Inquiry portion of the AU Core have a common set of learning outcomes. These are the primary learning outcomes for this course and are listed below:

● Examine an idea, problem, policy, or institution over a defined period of time.

● Employ a critical or systematic method to analyze the relationship between human values, ideas, institutions, policies, or perspectives and their social and historical context or conditions.

● Analyze and evaluate evidence and sources to develop an argument, or other student work product, that takes into account social and historical contexts or conditions.

As I mentioned earlier, our task is large. As we go through the course, however, the emphasis will be on topics from physics and astronomy, but I will try to balance our discussion to include history, philosophy, and mathematics, as well as working on some of the fundamental physics and astronomy problems that will allow us to understand those topics more deeply. A set of course-specific secondary learning outcomes which enhance and support those outlined above, have also been developed and are presented below. The goals and objectives specific to each learning outcome are presented as sub-items below each learning outcome. By the end of this course, you will also be able to:

● Understand fundamental historical, philosophical, and physical concepts, principles, and ideas.

● Understand major ideas and concepts that have shaped and are shaping 21st century scientific thought and discoveries.

● Understand connections between past, present, and future scientific developments and discoveries that have come to shape our conceptions of the universe.

● Understand and identify the major contributions of individual philosophers, scientists, astronomers, mathematicians, who have played a role in helping to develop our understanding of the universe.

● Appreciate science and the fundamental ideas and laws that govern the Universe.

Prerequisites: None

Course Material: Required and recommended

● Online homework system (required): Canvas

● Calculator (required): A scientific calculator.

● Text (required): Astronomy (OpenStax: https://openstax.org/details/books/astronomy) by Andrew Fraknoi, David Morrison, and Sidney Wolff.

● Text (required): College Physics (OpenStax: https://openstax.org/details/books/college-physics) by Paul Urone and Roger Hinrichs.

Communication: Most communication about this class will occur through the Blackboard online system. The Blackboard course ID for PHYS 230 in Spring 2021 is: PHYS-230-002.2021F: Changing Views of the Universe

Login to Canvas: To login to Canvas, you must have an American University email account. If you do not have one, you must obtain one before the start of class. If you use an email provider other than American, make sure to forward your American email to that account. Make sure you check your email regularly for class information. Email is also the preferred way to get in touch with the instructor outside of class and office hours. The syllabus, homework notice, and other documents will be posted on Canvas.

Etiquette: Please express yourself freely in this class during classes, office hours, on Canvas, etc. However, be respectful and polite to your fellow students and instructor.

Privacy: The instructor can track Canvas viewing, i.e., count the number of hits on each page and see who has accessed it. The instructor can also view your activities on Canvas. This is helpful when resolving OpenStax/Canvas problems and for providing feedback.

Methods of Instruction  You will have the opportunity to learn about changing universe from a variety of sources during this course, including:

● assigned textbook readings,

● lecture and problem solving,

● homework assignments,

● projects,

● tests, and

● discussions with me online during office hours.

What You Can Do: Here are some things you can do to get the most out of this course:

● Read the relevant sections of the Astronomy or Physics text, or videos before class.

● Participate in class by asking questions and sharing your thoughts.

● Complete all homework problems on time. You are allowed to discuss or work homework problems with other students.

● Chat with me during office hours if you are having trouble with anything.

Lecture Philosophy: Class time will be used to cover material that complements the textbook. Reading the textbooks and doing the homework is the primary way you are expected to learn the definitions, equations, and other basic material of the class. The majority of lecture time in this course will be spent exploring in greater depths the concepts introduced in the textbook using demonstrations, discussions, and additional worked examples.

Learning Styles: Recognizing that students learn science in a variety of ways, the instructor will take advantage of many different techniques, including collaborative learning, to maximize the overall effec-tiveness of this course. Although collaborative efforts will be encouraged for solving in-class problems, and assigned homework, they are not allowed for tests.

Show your work: The questions in the homework will be multiple choices, solving problem types, and short answers. For solving problem types, your solutions should be clear, organized, and use derivations in symbolic form (as discussed in class). Keep in mind that students who do best on exams are the ones who work carefully, writing things out clearly with a well-organized presentation of the concepts and equations used before inserting numbers.

Class Participation (5 points/class): Your presence is required at every class session and you are responsible for all material presented (i.e., discussion material, cosmological videos, guest lectures, handouts, announcements, schedule changes, etc.). You must notify me if you are going to be absent from class due to an illness, a university related function, or some other excusable activity. If you must be absent from a class session it is totally your responsibility to obtain the missed material. Further, if you must miss a class because of an extreme family or individual emergency or some other unavoidable circumstance, you should inform me as soon as possible. Notifying me of an absence via email is fine as long as it is sent a reasonable amount of time in advance. However, an email message sent 5 minutes before class is NOT an appropriate means of notifying of an absence. If you know you will need to be absent from class on a particular day you should let me know ahead of time so that proper arrangements can be made to make up any missed class work. Only when proper arrangements have been made with me in advance will you be allowed to make up a missed assignment, in-class activity, exam, etc. Attendance will be taken during each class period after 15 minutes into the class.

Online Homework: Homework will generally be assigned on Tue at 10 pm and due on the following Tue at midnight. There will be 20-30 problems/homework. Be prepared to spend between 4-6 hours on the lectures-homework combination. If you are spending more time than this please come to me for help. The homework will be on Canvas. You are allowed to work with your team or with a group (not copying) on your HW, which means discuss the ideas and things you don’t understand until you do. Many of the problem-solving types will be in the exams and final. So you will be happiest if you understand what you are doing. The point of homework is to practice thinking, not copying a solution algorithm from another source. You need to submit all assigned problems on-time before the due date to receive full credit, otherwise, you will ONLY receive credits for the problems that you have submitted.

Exams: There will be a midterm and a final exam in this course. The exam will be open books, notes, homework, with time restriction on Blackboard. The exam will be active for 24 hours. How-ever, once the exam is open, you will have 3 hours to finish it.

Important: Take responsibility for your work and yourself. You are expected to complete all exams by the policies outlined for the assignments, on time and with no external help but openStax/notes/homework. Honor is of utmost importance in the academic atmosphere and is taken very seriously by me. I will feel free to give you freedom, but then the conduct of the Honor System instituted at American Univer-sity is in the hands of the students. If it is determined that you have cheated on an exam, then I will have the freedom to give you a zero on that exam.

Any missed exam will count as zero points unless it is an excused absence (illness, participation in a scheduled University event, etc.), which should be cleared with me before or immediately following the missed class. The missed exam may be made up in a way decided by the instructor.

Extra credit - there will be no extra credit assignments. Do not ask me if I will give you extra credit to make up for something you missed. The answer is no.

Project: This assignment is intended to be significantly different from the homework or exams. This is a group project. What I am providing is an opportunity for you to use your creativity to express your understanding of a topic(s) related to either of our course themes. You may select a topic(s) based on your readings, class lectures and discussions, any of the video segments, or topics brought up through the guest lectures. All projects will require a written commentary and details will be presented later. In your commentary you will be asked to clearly explain your project and its significance. You should also address how your topic in some way can be connected to one or more historical cosmological models. Possible topics for your creative projects include (but are not limited to):

● The creation of a piece of artwork (e.g. a collage, drawing, painting, sculpture, a particular model of the universe, etc.). A musical expression of some type (e.g. writing a song, creating an interpretive dance).

● A creative literary piece (e.g. a piece of poetry, a short story, creation of a website, a blog, a piece of science journalism such as an interview with a scientist, cosmologist, astronomer, etc.).

● The construction of a demonstration that illustrates a specific concept or idea.

● The construction of a scientific model, machine, instrument, or piece of equipment that illus-trates a specific concept or idea.

● The creation of an original scientific theory or conjecture about the nature and reality of the universe.

● The creation and performance of a short skit or play.

● You might also create a video that might serve as a stand-alone piece or that might accompany your project.

● The creation of something edible. This might be a stretch, but I would be willing to entertain this idea.

You will need to submit a short proposal outlining your proposed creative project in order to have your topic approved. In order to get your project approved, you will need to demon-strate in your proposal how you plan to tie your project in to one or more historical cosmologies and their original source materials. In addition, your proposal must in-clude at least one properly documented citation of the original source material(s) you will be utilizing in your project. Additional details about the creative project assignment will be provided in class. Students will present a 5-minute presentation of their project at the end of the semester.

Grading: Your grade in this class will be determined by a combination of projects, exams, homework, and class participation. The separate weightings will be:

Class Participation 5%

Homework 20%

Project 15%

Midterm 30%

Final 30%

Final Grade Final course grades will be assigned using the following scale:

● The instructor reserves the right to adjust final letter grades based on events in the class, but your letter grade will never be worse than what is reflected in the above table.

● If you feel a test problem has been misgraded, SEND ME AN EMAIL. Write a note explaining your concern to me via email or talk to me during office hours WITHIN 48 HOURS of receiving the grade. After 48 HOURS, all grades are final.