Instructor:  Paul Halpern
Text:  Course Pack of Selected Readings
Meetings:  M, F  11:00 AM -12:00 PM    GLS 302

                            Th      11:00 AM -12:00 PM    GLS 303

Office Hours:   Th 9-10, 12-1 or by Appointment

Students will be evaluated by the following criteria:
Midterm:  25%
Final: 25%
Group Project: 25%
Course Journals: 15%
Participation:  10%

Discussion is an extremely important element of this course.  Therefore attendance is critical.  Consequently, note that students who miss three or more lectures, unexcused, will receive a zero grade for participation.

Plagiarism, in an exam or paper, will result in a zero grade.

 

CLASS SCHEDULE 

Week	Starting Date:	Topics	Readings	Additional Material
1	January 12	Introduction Early Astronomy	Pythagoras	Film Excerpt
2	January 19	Models of the Solar System	Plato Copernicus Newton	Song: Galileo Video: Cosmos
3	January 26	The Big Bang Creation Stories	Genesis Augustine of Hippo Quran	Song: Ghost Dance
4	February 2	Images of Creation	Navajo Creation Myth Popl Vuh	Creation Imagery
5	February 9	Mystical Ideas about Creation	Kabbalah Nag Hammadi Lao Tzu	Film Excerpt
6	February 16	Einstein and the Fourth Dimension	Einstein Theosophy	Video: "Einstein"
7	February 23	Cultural Ideas about Space, Time and Higher Dimensions	Handout	Films by Peter Rose
8	March 1	SPRING BREAK	SPRING BREAK	SPRING BREAK
9	March 8	Parallel Universes Anthropic Principle	Barrow and Tipler Myriad Worlds	MIDTERM
10	March 15	Cyclical vs. Linear Models of the Cosmos	Cyclical Serpent Rig Veda	Video: "Changing Models of the Universe"
11	March 22	Stephen Hawking Black Holes	Hawking Davies	Video: "A Brief History   of Time"
12	March 29	The Fate of the Universe	The Future of Man (Teilhard) Revelation The Omega Point	Songs and Imagery about the End of the World
13	April 5	Dark Matter and the Accelerating Universe: New Frontiers in Cosmology	Handouts	REVIEW
14	April 12	Conclusion	NOTEBOOKS DUE	GROUP PROJECTS
15	April 19			FINAL EXAM

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