Matter, Energy, Space and Time: The Rules that Govern the Physical World
This course was available in the past and may be presented again as part of the Master of Liberal Arts curriculum.
This course will explore the nature of science, the basic laws that govern the physical world, and how we discovered them, from Democritus and atoms to Einstein and quantum mechanics. The instructor will be smiling if the student takes away from the course what science is and isn’t, why it is important, a basic understanding of the fundamental laws of physics and how they have created the physical world around us, and the deep mysteries ahead.
- Fulfills the Core - Physical Science requirement
About the Professor
Michael Turner, PhD
Michael S. Turner is the theoretical cosmologist who coined the term dark energy. He helped establish the interdisciplinary field that combines together cosmology and elementary particle physics to understand the origin and evolution of the universe. His research focuses on the earliest moments of creation, and he has made contributions to inflationary cosmology, particle dark matter and structure formation, the theory of big bang nucleosynthesis, and the nature of dark energy.