Course Details

Have you always had a curiosity about how the technology you use and depend upon works? Have you been frustrated by the opaqueness of explanations on the web that almost always seem to depend upon your having a background in physics (and your experience with physics courses was, frankly, terrible)?  Would you like to understand the basic concepts that govern virtually everything, from why there are two high tides a day, to how GPS pinpoints your location, or to how a violin produces its sound? Would you like to understanding how the internet works, or for that matter, how a cell phone can connect you to virtually any person in the world while you are speeding down I5?

This course provides a survey of the fundamental physical concepts that undergird our modern technological society and is intended for non-science majors who are eager to build upon their natural curiosity of the technological world surrounding them to achieve a level of understanding that will serve them throughout their lives.

This course will use the extremely popular text How Things Work: The Physics of Everyday Life by L.A. Bloomfield of the University of Virginia, with examples and applications determined by the class.  We will make heavy use of the web, developing methodologies to parse useful understandings from the noise contained in its immense resources.  Students will learn to prepare PPT presentations that are clear expositions of specific examples of “how things work” and in doing so become a resource for their own education and for those around them.

The course is limited to 15 students in order to facilitate a high degree of class discussion, even in a ZOOM environment.  No background in mathematics and/or physics needed.