Fall Quarter 2008
Prof. James Schombert
Office: 461 Willamette, 6-5214
Office Hours: 9-10am MWF
email: jschombe@uoregon.edu
Course Content:
Cosmology, the study of the formation and evolution of the Universe, has progressed from its origins in early man's ideas of Nature, to Chinese and Greek worldviews, to Dante's vision of Heaven and Hell, to Newton's Clockwork Universe. Today, cosmology has entered a Golden Age with the launch of numerous space telescopes and development of technology that allows us to study the echo of the Big Bang. In addition to exploring the processes behind the origin of spacetime and matter, the science of cosmology has also expanded to resolve a number of philosophical and theological issues, such as Creation (i.e. Genesis 1:1) and the anthropic principle.
This course is a historical and philosophical review of our cosmological worldview from mythical times to modern science. We will explore topics in the geometry of the Universe, expanding spacetime and the Big Bang, dark matter, black holes and wormholes, quarks and mesons, galaxies and quantum physics. Our goal is to provide the student with a summary of our current understanding of astrophysics as it relates to the structure of the Universe and what topics remain to be explored in the 21st century. The material is presented without complex mathematics, but an understanding of algebra is required.
Course Organization:
All lectures in this course will be delivered electronically. The lecture pages will be on the Web in HTML (hypertext mark-up language) format so that they are accessible from any computer, either at home or on campus. The address for this course is abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/cosmo.
All the readings necessary for the course are listed at the web site. The textbook for the class is Harrison's Cosmology. Many of these assignments are long, so please do not fall behind in the reading schedule.
Even though the web notes supplement the textbook, they do not replace your need to attend class. A great deal of material is discussed in lecture that is not in the web notes and will appear on the exams. And difficult concepts in the web lectures will be clarified in class. So please attend.
Feel free to drop by my office at anytime my schedule shows I'm around. Most times email is a faster way to get ahold of me. Make sure your mail has a non-implicit destination, one recipient, a non-empty subject field, and does not contain any html code and is 100% 7bit clean pure ASCII.
Grading:
Grading will consist of three exams given on dates marked on the main class web page. These are one hour, short essay, critical thinking type of exams. Note that the exams are not cumulative. The 1st exam covers material from the start of the course to the exam date. The 2nd exam covers material from the 1st exam to the day of the 2nd exam. The last exam covers the last 1/3 of the course occurs on the last day of class.
If you miss an exam due to illness you must contact me as soon as possible after the exam. Missing an exam, for a good reason, usually means an oral make-up exam (these are torture, so you want to avoid missing an exam at all costs).
Notice there is no final exam during final exam week. The three exams taking during the classtime consist of all the exams towards your grade.
Accommodations:
If you have a documented disability and anticipate needing accommodations in this course, please see me as soon as possible. And please request that the Counselor for Students with Disabilities (H. Gerdes, hgerdes@oregon) send a letter verifying your disability.
