Astronomy 122 - - Fall 2006

The History of Matter.

The class will meet MWF 11-12noon in Room 807 of the Dennison Bldg.

The text for the course will be available on line, but you will need a password to reach it. These will be emailed to registered students as soon as names are available from WOLVERINEACCESS. You may download the text and print it. Note that a printed text is convenient to read, but the links are not available on the hard-copy version!

If you have a UM uniquename and email me (cowley@umich.edu), I will give you the password, so you can peruse the text before registering.

The course is structured for non-science majors, and the few equations in the text are mostly used for illustration (e.g. Einstein's E = mc², or Newton's F = ma). Nevertheless, our discussion covers a lot of quite sophisticated science.

Each student will give one, or two 15-minute presentations on topics chosen from the reading material. The depth and level of these presentations is left to the individual.

When we are not in this "presentation" mode, probably two-thirds of the term, the daily classes will be organized as follows. The class will be divided into four houses. Each meeting, one of the four houses will have responsibility of summarizing the assigned readings. This job is split evenly among the house members. Members of this "presenting house" will answer questions posed by the members of the other three houses, or will have the option of appealing to the "judge," (that's me). Students not in the house answering questions will bring two written questions to class on the day's reading. These questions will be handed in at the end of class, along with an evaluation of how well the question was answered. There is not time for all of the questions to be answered in class, but I try to write at least a brief answer to all the questions before returning them at the next class meeting.

Chapter 1: Matter and the Chemical Elements