| The
Ups and Downs of Temperature (Spring 2005)
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This course fulfills Category III of the General Education Requirement. Faculty:
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Course Description: Using temperature as both a guide and a connecting theme this course is a tour of many of the twentieth century’s great scientific advances in understanding the origins of life, of the Earth, the Sun and the universe. Of common measurements such as length and time, temperature is the subtlest. Yet it plays a major role in our understanding these questions as we will see. The course explores both the measurements and the concept in many scientific disciplines including astronomy, biology, chemistry, ecology, geology, physics and physiology. The course is basically divided into six segments, beginning with a study of how temperature is regulated in humans and other animals as well as the problems that occur when that regulation breaks down. Part two discusses the origins of how temperature came to be measured and the underlying principles that explain what temperature means in terms of molecular motion. Part three deals with the determination and variation of the Earth’s temperature as set by the Sun, the oceans, the air and the Earth’s own internal heat. This segment will also address briefly the history, the science and the politics of global warming. Part four describes the role of temperature in the origins of life, thermophilic bacteria and the related possibility of extraterrestrial life. Part five deals with the temperature of the Sun, both on its surface and interior, the temperature associated with radiation in outer space and ultimately with the origin of the universe. The final section of the course addresses the nineteenth century quest to reach the absolute zero of temperature and how this subject has come to be seen and modified in the twentieth century because of quantum mechanics. |