EAS/BIOEE 154
Introduction to Oceanography
Lecture 1
Instructors:
Prof. William White
Prof. Charles Greene
 Labs & Enrollment Options
 Labs start next week!
 Grading and Exams
 Text
 Sverdrup, Duxbury, and Duxbury, An Introduction to the World's
Oceans 8th edition (or previous editions)
 Class Web Site:
 www.geo.cornell.edu/eas/education/course/descr/
EAS154/EAS154home.html
Goals for the Semester
 Understand the Oceans
 Achieve an understanding of the oceans as a natural system.
 Understand Science
 Understand how science works, that is to say, how our
knowledge of world around us has been achieved and how it
continues to advance.
 Be able to develop informed opinions about science-related public
issues.
What is Science?
 Science is the search for an understanding of nature
 Two parts:
 Philosophy or Approach
 Body of Knowledge
 Science deals in only two quantities
 Observations
 Theories
 Theories are attempts to explain observations. Scientific
understanding advances by making observations (and often
replicating them), constructing theories to explain them, then
testing those theories by making new observations to see if they
match the predictions of the theories.
EAS/BIOEE 154
Lectu re 1
Oceanography and the Nature of Science
 Physics, chemistry, biology, and geology are uniquely intertwined
in the oceans
 Only through an understanding of basic principles from all of these
sciences can an understanding of the ocean be achieved.
Why Study Oceanography?
 To Master the Sea
 Because it affects our lives
 Because it is there
A Look Ahead
 Geology
 Marine Geology
 Plate Tectonics
 Ocean Sediments: History Book of the Planet
 Chemistry
 Nature of Water
 Why the Sea is Salty
 Interaction with ocean geology
 Interaction with ocean biology
 Physics
 Ocean Currents
 Tides
 Waves (including tsunamis)
 How oceans affect climate and their role in climate change
 Biology
 Global Productivity
 What controls the abundance and distribution of life in the
oceans?
 Marine Biological Communities
 Coral Reefs
 The Rocky Shore
Some Study Questions
 Why must a scientist be a skeptic?
 How do we test observations?
 How do we test theories?
 What is meant by “parsimony”?
 How do tsunamis illustrate the interaction of the physical and the
geological in the oceans?
 How does the ocean affect your life?