Science Seminar readings – Winter 2012-13
Week 1
A. Finkel on Learning Through Writing Together (from Teaching With Your Mouth Shut)
PattiAnnRogers: The Origin of Order
Terry Tempest Williams:
B. Sagan and Drury on critical thinking: Baloney Detector from Demon Haunted World
0. Einstein’s Dreams, by Alan Lightman (1993) We’ll choose chapters from this collection to
accompany select readings.
http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Gravity-Science-Mastersebook/dp/B003PJ6UFC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1353033583&sr=11&keywords=three+roads+to+quantum+gravity
2. The Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature, by Philip Ball
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0198502435/ref=rdr_ext_tmb
3. A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing, by L. M. Krauss.
Free Press, New York, 2012
http://www.amazon.com/A-Universe-from-Nothingebook/dp/B004T4KQJS/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353033812&sr=11&keywords=universe+from+nothing
4. Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe
and the Modern World, by Lisa Randall (2011)
HarperCollins, New York, 2011
$29.99 (442 pp.).
ISBN 978-0-06-172372-8
http://www.amazon.com/Knocking-Heavens-Door-Scientificebook/dp/B004XVN8EC/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1353033346&sr=1-1
5 – midquarter conferences on Thursday, box proposals due
5-6. Massive: The Missing Particle That Sparked the Greatest Hunt in Science, by Ian Sample
Basic Books, New York, 2010
$25.95 (272 pp.).
ISBN 978-0-465-01947-2
http://www.amazon.com/Massive-Missing-Particle-Greatestebook/dp/B007KLZ020/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1353033419&sr=11&keywords=massive+sample
6-7. CMB
COBE leader and team share cosmology prize, 2006 PT
Mather and Smoot Share Nobel Physics Prize for Measuring the Cosmic Microwave Background
Bertram Schwarzschild, Phys. Today 59(12), 18 (2006); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.2435666
Cosmic sound waves rule
Daniel J. Eisenstein and Charles L. Bennett
Citation: Phys. Today 61(4), 44 (2008); doi: 10.1063/1.2911177
View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.2911177
Cocktail party at the beginning of the universe
Robert A. Putnam
Citation: Phys. Today 62(1), 8 (2009); doi: 10.1063/1.3074243
View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3074243
7-8. ACCELERATING EXPANSION:
Article from Science News or Scientific American?
The Accelerating Expansion of the Universe
John Updike
Citation: Phys. Today 58(4), 39 (2005); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.1955477
Very Distant Supernovae Suggest that the Cosmic Expansion is Speeding Up
Bertram Schwarzschild
Citation: Phys. Today 51(6), 17 (1998); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.882267
Supernovae, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Universe
Saul Perlmutter
Citation: Phys. Today 56(4), 53 (2003); doi: 10.1063/1.1580050
DarkEnergy Discoverers Share Cosmology Prize
Citation: Phys. Today 60(9), 86 (2007);
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.2784694
Discoverers of the Hubble expansion’s acceleration share Nobel physics prize
Bertram M. Schwarzschild
Citation: Phys. Today 64(12), 14 (2011);
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.1348
8-9. UNIFICATION
Articles about unification from MMP – ST fails tests
X - Once Before Time: A Whole Story of the Universe (LQG)
Martin Bojowald
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2010.
$27.95 (320 pp.).
ISBN 978-0-307-27285-0
I’d like to read Bojowald on Loop Quantum Gravity – do we have time? Or just Smolin’s
overview of LQG, ST, and …
http://www.amazon.com/Once-Before-Time-Universeebook/dp/B003F3PLSK/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1353033491&sr=11&keywords=once+before+time
Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, by Lee Smolin
Basic Books, New York, 2001. $24.00 (231 pp.). ISBN 0-465-07835-4
http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Gravity-Science-Mastersebook/dp/B003PJ6UFC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1353033583&sr=11&keywords=three+roads+to+quantum+gravity
10. Earth – Climate change
10. boxes & final