Class materials may change. Watch the assigned episode pages.
Our course outline is a series of ten short, fast, sketchy YouTube videos called Crash Course Big History (CCBH). We will watch the assigned episode(s) via Zoom, and follow up with discussion, which will lead to additional materials (background and updates, in the form of videos, slides, and lecture, as needed to help with student questions). The series comprises* ten episodes. A few of the first episodes will stretch into more than one class, and in later meetings, we might watch more than one.
You must tell me when you need additional background to make sense of these patter-song paced videos. Use the question/comment form on any page to tell me your needs, and I will try to incorporate more accessible material into the class. Also use the form to ask questions you want the class and me to address. Please submit your contributions at least 24 hours before the upcoming class. Late submissions might still be taken up in a later class.
The CCBH videos are fast. Remember that you can stop or back up the videos to hear something again, or to pause an image long enough to actually read and think about it. Just click anywhere on the video image to pause, and use your computer's cursor-left key to back up about five seconds per keypress.
Who knows? These videos might even improve your ability to understand the speech of younger people!
Assignments for Classes on Episode 1:
• Crash Course Big History #1: Big Bang (already watched in class #1)
• Watch History of the Universe (Crash Course Astronomy #44)
This is listed as a resource below, be we'll start class #2 with it, and use it to get at some of your questions. It will guide us to some basic background information such as the nature of light and microwaves, and the nature of spacetime.
• Calendar of events for the universe
The hosts of Crash Course Big History (John and Hank Green, and Emily Grassly -- let's call them lGp, little Green people) help you grasp the vastness of time by compressing the whole lifetime of the Universe into 13 years. But they never use this model again in the series. So let's adopt Carl Sagan's Cosmic Calendar, which compresses everything into one calendar year, and I'll try to make use of it throughout the course. First, listen to its description in the 2014 Cosmo series by clicking HERE, then watching Episode 1, from 27:00 to 42:00 (when Carl Sagan says, "We are a way for the Universe to Know Itself.").
• Important details about the Cosmic Calendar
Next take a quick look at "Carl Sagan's Cosmic Calendar" in the right-hand menu column of this page, near the top. This link is available for easy reference from all "Big Bang, Then What?" pages.
• Read the opening section of How Scientists Know: Electromagnetic Waves and Fields.
• Read the opening section of Spacetime, at Wikipedia. Don't let it scare you; we'll try to make sense of in class.
• Read the opening section of Energy, at Wikipedia. What is energy, anyway?
• To Do
Before each class, check the appropriate episode page(s), like this one, for Assignments, things To Think About, More Resources. Add your questions in the form at Your Questions. To be sure that your own question or comment is considered for the upcoming Monday class, submit it at least 24 hours beforehand (Sunday morning).
The day before class, look again at Your Questions to see what your classmates have added there.
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To Think About
• Is written history the "best information" we have about the past?
• What is science?
• What does spacetime mean?
• What does it tell us that the sky is dark at night?
• What is the cosmic microwave background, and what is a microwave, anyway?
• Have you ever heard (or seen) the Doppler effect in action?
• The first law of thermodynamics is a conservation law: in any physical process, energy is conserved, meaning that energy is neither created nor destroyed. What is energy, anyway? Search online for what scientists mean when they use the term. What other uses of the word have you heard that do not fit this definition? What do you think those users mean?
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More Resources
Resources might move during the course. For example, a Resource for one Episode Page might become an Assignment for another. Or an Assignment might move to a later episode page if we did not have time to do it justice. Resources and Assignments might be at more than one place within the BBTW pages. The aim is for an Episode Page to give easy access to best materials for that episode.
• Wikipedia: Big History (It really is a field of study.) This article contains some very powerful images depicting the immensity of time since the Big Bang.
• A somewhat less brief History of the Universe (Crash Course Astronomy #44)
• From the series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, the Cosmic Calendar, which scales (compresses) the 13.8-billion-year history of the universe into one calendar year. See the link to "Carl Sagan's Cosmic Calendar" near the top right on this page.
• A more detailed description of the Big Bang:
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If you would like a globe of the Cosmic Microwave Background, they are hard to find. Here's my latest effort:
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Your Questions
On every page of this web site is a form where you can contribute questions, comments, or suggestions. Any contributions that pertain to this page will appear HERE. Shortly before each class, check Your Questions for the episode(s) assigned.
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* I don't usually use the word comprise, but this situation struck me as an opportunity to show how to use it correctly; it is commonly misused. A common misuse would be, "The series is comprised of ten episodes." Repeat: that's an example of how to do it wrong(ly). A correct but wordier, passive voice, version is, "This series is composed of ten episodes.
"The symphony comprises three movements." Correct.
"The symphony is composed of three movements." Correct.
Right.
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