A bit more about Gsci 101/Phys 297

I realize that only a few students likely to be interested in signing up for a science course while in London. However, in hopes of helping the possibility seem a little more fun, I want to give a brief description of the topic and motivation just you know what you are missing!



Something very special happened in science starting in the late 18th century and the majority of it happened in England - much of this in London.

• The development of industrial centers, primarily textiles, forced a significant expansion of coal mining for energy to run the looms. This led to the development of practical steam engines.
• The expansion of English mastery of the seas led to the need for better timepieces. This in turn fueled the explosive developments in our understanding of the biology, ecology, and geology. This leads ultimately to evolution.
• The expansion of industry pushed science and engineering to get a better grasp on the world around us. This led to thermodynamics and to electricity and magnetism.

All this things are intimately connected, yet we are going to choose the subject of thermodynamics as our focus. It is a foundational subject, forming the basis of most of what we see wound us in the world today. Many of the key players lived and worked in London; England contained most of them.

As the name suggests, thermodynamics is the study of the motion and transfer of energy in the form of heat. Without thermodynamics physics and chemistry would have very little to say about the things around us each day. Building a more efficient automobile, sending humans to the moon, making batteries for your cell phone, every industrial chemical process that makes any sort of substance for farms, food, or manufacturing, and even the business of life itself is only understood in the context of thermodynamics.

In this class we will learn about the people, the places and, most importantly, the ideas that let us understand our modern world. One of the central ideas in this course is the notion of entropy. As described in Wikipedia, in 1959, English chemist, C. P. Snow gave a  Rede Lecture which he publish asThe Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Here, Snow argues that the quality of education in the world is on the decline. For example, many scientists have never read Charles Dickens, but artistic intellectuals are equally non-conversant with science. He wrote:

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: 'Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?'

The comparison of a science concept and a poem or play by one of the greatest minds in history might seem odd and out of place. I hope that be the time we finish the class, you will have a greater appreciation of the role of entropy in science and in your life.

It's gonna be fun.