This an unusual physics course - decidedly not dead white guy science. I hope that you'll come away with a sophisticated appreciation for some of the most intriguing and baffling ideas about the Universe, most of which have come about only in the last few decades. This understanding didn't come easily and it's still incomplete. So we at MSU are hard at work pushing deeper working in international labs around - and above and below(?) - the Earth.

And I want to tell you about it!

intro_1280_720 from Raymond Brock on Vimeo.

These topics are alive. The work is ongoing. I can't tell you the all of the answers, because in some important cases we're still trying to figure out the questions!

And that's one of the things I hope you will find interesting about this course: it's current.

In order to get to the neat stuff, we'll pass through some basic physics and I'll try to do that in a gentle and engaging way, emphasizing what we need. I promise not to get bogged down in the mathematics. In fact, you'll be surprised how simple the math will be.

Nope. Mathematics isn't where this course will be challenging. It's the abstract ideas that emerge from the mathematics that will cause you to scratch your heads.

We're going to find that simple questions asked by imaginative people - Einstein, Bohr, Fermi, Dirac, Feynman, Gamow, Hubble, Weinberg, Guth, and others - lead to unusual answers.

The deep essence of Nature doesn't fit our brains so you'll struggle to grasp the meanings, just as we do. Will it be challenging? Will you succeed? Yes and Yes! Come to class. Do the work. Talk to me. You'll do fine.

I know you're asking yourself, "Self, why do I have to take a course outside of my major?"

Glad you asked. The U.S. higher education system is nearly unique in the world. In most places if you were, say a physics major...at university you'd take only physics and mathematics courses. Not literature. Not biology. Not pretty much anything but your major courses. In 1909 Abbott Lawrence Lowell, the new President of Harvard College said at his investiture: “A discussion of the ideal college training would appear to lead to the conclusion that the best type of liberal education in our complex modern world aims at producing men who know a little of everything and something well.”

This was the beginning of the idea of the well-rounded, educated person in the U.S. and the beginnings of the General Education requirements at every U.S. college and university. It's clearly the reason why the United States' 20-somethings are among the top 3 most scientifically literate in the world, behind only Norway and Sweden.

So you're participating in an important part of your education. My job is to help you to appreciate areas that are not your focus of study and to do it in an engaging way.

At MSU "general education" is called "Integrative Studies." You can find the goals of the Center for Integrative Studies in General Science here: http://cisgs.msu.edu/about.htmlhttp://cisgs.msu.edu/about.html .