UNIVERSAL TIMEKEEPER

Catalog description

The goal of the course is to illustrate — and perhaps even inculcate — quantitative and scientific reasoning skills. The subject material employed in this task is the study of atoms and their nuclei which, through a wide variety of physical and chemical techniques, can be used to reconstruct quantitatively the past. Following an introduction to atoms, light, and energy, we will explore topics including the detection of art forgeries, the precise dating of archeological sites, a reconstruction of the development of agriculture and the history of the human diet, the history of past climate (and its implications for the future), the history and age of the Earth, and the history of the Universe