Course Description: An introduction to what we know about the physical universe and how we have discovered it. The process of scientific discovery is explored using major discoveries in the history of science as examples, Topics include the fundamental properties of matter and energy, the nature of chemical reactions, the use of energy by living things, the nature and property of DNA and its role in biological evolution, and the evolution of the human mind/brain. The course includes a combination of lecture, classroom discussion, and an experimental laboratory.
(Model Syllabus)
COURSE OBJECTIVES:
| to introduce the mode of inquiry of the natural sciences |
| to enable students to understand and apply basic investigatory skills in a problem solving context |
| to examine a sample of fundamental discoveries of the natural sciences |
| Week # | Idea(s) |
Discoveries |
| 1 | Science is not a set of facts but a way of studying the world. | Bacon Descartes |
| 2 | The universe is very old and it is organized very differently than people imagined before they investigated it scientifically. | Copernicus Kepler Hubble |
| 3 | Cosmology and mechanics were integrated by Newton and
Galileo. Energy exists in many forms (chemical, kinetic, etc.). |
Newton Galileo |
| 4 | Energy can be converted from potential to kinetic but the
total amount of energy is conserved. Entropy increases in any transformation of energy. |
Joule Watt |
| 5 | Scientific Theories must be supported by empirical
data. Quantitative relationships between variables are expressed as laws (e.g., the gas laws). |
Paracelsus Lavoisier Boyle Charles |
| 6 | The periodic table of elements expresses patterns of chemical
reactivity and physical properties of the elements. The atom, the smallest unit of an element, is itself composed of subatomic particles. |
Mendeleev Rutherford Thompson |
| 7 | New ways of thinking about light led to new ways of describing electrons in atoms. | Young Einstein Bohr |
| 8 | The forces in an atom cause atoms to combine in
molecules. In most chemical reactions, matter achieves a more stable state, releasing energy. |
Gibbs |
| 9 | The energy of chemical reactions is harnessed by living
things and used to drive other (endergonic) chemical reactions. That energy is harnessed to produce organized structures by enzymes and other proteins. |
Krebs Michaelis and Menton |
10 |
The proteins in a cell are built from instructions in a
cell’s DNA. DNA is a molecule that contains information in the sequence of nucleotides and that can be replicated, permitting reproduction of living things. Imperfect replication of DNA produces mutations, changing the properties of the living thing. |
Watson and Crick Jacob and Monod |
| 11 | Living things have evolved by a process of natural
selection. DNA and the genetic code date back to the earliest living things (3.5 billion years ago). Living things have evolved over that time as beneficial random mutations in DNA sequences have been selected for. |
Darwin Mendel |
| 12 | The evolution of living things has changed the chemistry of
the earth and atmosphere. The changing earth has also affected the evolution of living things. In the present, biochemical processes change the local and global environment. Humans naturally contribute to those changes. |
Hutton |
| 13 | Animals are one type of living thing—multicellular,
getting nutrition by ingestion and digestion of other organisms. Being active, animals have brains to help them make decisions (find food, reproduce, avoid predation). Brains contain cells that are specialized to send electrochemical signals from one part of the body to another. Drugs that act on brain cells affect conscious experience. |
Galvani Helmholtz |
14 |
The human brain is among the most complex of brains. Humans developed such complex brains because their social structure favored empathy and cooperation within groups. Development of language further increased consciousness of self and the potential for cooperation among humans. |
Broca Jackson Sperry |
The material described in the above table will be addressed in three ways:
| the lecture and directed class discussion at the beginning of each class |
| the cooperative learning exercises during the latter half of each class |
| the experimental laboratory each week |
Examples of cooperative learning exercises:
Week 1: Is science good or evil? Has it made life better or worse for humanity? Is it sufficient to consider only the costs and benefits for humanity or should we also consider other living or non-living things?
Week 1: How do you determine whether your sense perceptions are caused by events in a physical world? Is there, in other words, anything ‘out there’, and why might you think so?
Week 2: What causes objects to be different colors? Do red objects add something to light to make it red or is something taken away? What sort of tests could you perform to distinguish between these hypotheses?
Week 2: Which model of the universe is better, Ptolemy’s or Copernicus’? What sort of additional evidence would be needed to be able to prove one more true than the other?
Week 3: Whose mechanical ideas were sounder, Aristotle’s or Galileo’s? If one is clearly right, why would people have ever believed the ideas of the other?
Week 3: How many different kinds of energy are there? List various examples of energy in the world. Can you group these examples into a small number of general types of energy?
Week 4: Why is air pressure nearly the same everywhere? What are the chances that all of the molecule of air in a room might at one instant be on one side of the room rather than the other?
Structure of the experimental laboratory:
The experimental laboratory is intended to provide time in class for students to work in groups to design experiments, analyze and interpret data, and consider the implications of scientific findings. Unlike a traditional scientific laboratory, this component of the course will not focus on the performance of technical laboratory procedures. Instead, data will be collected by simple procedures or even provided to students based on experiments performed elsewhere. By streamlining the process of collecting data, we will free students to spend more time on questions of experimental design, analysis and interpretation of data, and generation of further hypotheses and experiments based on their findings. We hope thereby to emphasize science as a process as well as to demonstrate how scientific inquiry can be applied to everyday phenomena that often are taken for granted.
Examples of experimental laboratories:
Weeks 1 and 2: To get students accustomed to the idea of experimentation, we will ask them to perform an experiment of their own devising. They will choose the dependent and independent variables and will frame a plausible hypothesis as to how the dependent variable might be affected by the independent variable. They will then perform the experiment and write up the results in standard scientific format.
Week 3: Students will replicate some of the experiments that Galileo performed to test his hypotheses concerning the nature of motion. This will entail timing (with their own pulse as well as more modern, sophisticated devices), the motions of balls rolling down inclined planes and of pendulums. They will compare their expectations and conclusions with those of Aristotle and Galileo.
Week 5: Students will be provided with data from historical experiments in chemistry and use them to test hypotheses about the nature of matter. These exercises are intended to confront them with the importance of careful measurements and statistical analyses in distinguishing between rival hypotheses.
Week 7: Students will replicate some of the classic experiments that demonstrated that light behaves as a wave, even though in other ways it appears to behave as a particle.
Week 14: Students will perform some of the classic experimental protocols that have been used to test for extrasensory perception in humans. The results of individuals and the class will be analyzed and the statistical probabilities of students guessing at higher than chance levels will be determined. There will be a discussion of what can reasonably be concluded from such experiments, when apparently positive results are obtained.
Narrative of Story Line:
The scientific method is illustrated by our model for the solar system in Area 1 since it represents a model in which we have an extremely high level of confidence. The discussion of Area 1 could include a brief description of our address in the universe as well as a comparison with previous models and a history of how it became the accepted model. The historical discussion leads naturally to Newton’s theory of motion in Area 2 which "drove the nails into the coffin" of the geocentric model. This change in paradigm from a stationary to a moving earth allows for a brief history of motion from Aristotle’s theory to the modern reformulation of mechanics in terms of momentum and energy.
Conservation of energy and the "energy crisis", topics of Area 3, follow naturally. They can be illustrated by the first law of thermodynamics, which in turn leads to the second law and the direction of natural processes. The usefulness of the energy concept could also be demonstrated by discussing the possibility of perpetual motion machines. Thermodynamics’ macroscopic considerations can be brought to microscopic models through an example such as the free expansion of gases, and from there to the kinetic theory of gases.
Area 4 and a discussion of the atomic model including a history of its success in chemistry is the next topic in this story line. A treatment of models of the atom in Area 5 and the combination of atoms into molecules and cells in Area 6 would then follow naturally. This chemical description can then be connected to a description of rocks and minerals through the rock cycle. This, in turn, illustrates the principle of uniformitarianism which can be explained by plate tectonics in Area 7. It should also be noted how this relatively new theory explains catastrophic events such as earthquakes and volcanism. A brief history of how the elements formed might also be included here or in Area 5.
The topics thus far can be tied into Darwin’s theory of evolution for living matter on earth in Area 8. From there the macroscopic and microscopic explanations of biological processes can be treated in Area 9 and their implications for humans in Area 10. This story line can be concluded with Area 11 with an illustration of scientific understanding in a more embryonic, or less certain, case, i.e., the brain. If time allows, a discussion of animal and human behavior could also be added as Area 12.