INTRODUCTION

•  This course is intended to give students a look at how the universe is built, hopefully creating in them a sense of awareness and awe about the universe on a daily basis as they go about the rest of their lives and move around in it.  The course is not designed to be an AP-level class.  We encourage any student with an interest to enroll.

• In a nutshell, this course is a look at the smallest things that are (Particle Physics) and the largest things that are (Cosmology).  In the years since World War II scientists, primarily the Americans, Russians, and the British, have learned amazing things about the tiniest particles that exist and how they combine with each other to make up compounds, mixtures, you, me, planets.....literally everything that exists.  We'll look at them, and then turn our view toward the universe on a large scale.  Cosmology is the science that studies the whole universe, including theories about its origin, evolution, structure, and future. We'll throw in some things about Fusion Energy, just to sweeten the deal.

• This course is usually taught on the college level, but we feel it is a great class for high school students who want to learn more about the universe they live in.  We've patterned the class after most college classes that deal with the same material, but have made some nice adjustments to make it a fun class to take in high school.......removing nearly all of the mathematics, but retaining a good use of various reading and internet materials.  Class discussions will form the center point of the course on most days.

        There is no single text which would give us all the reference material we need.  We'll get most of our information from class discussions and from material found  on the world wide web.  There will be supplementary readings assigned from various sources that will be provided to the student.

I.  Particle Physics
    1. History
    2. Decay Processes
        a. Radioactivity
        b. Quantum Mechanics
        c. Mediators
    3. Experimental Evidence for Particles
        a. Early 20th century
        b. Accelerators & Detectors
    4. The Standard Model
        a. Atoms
        b. Quarks & Leptons
        c. Interactions
    5. Beyond the Standard Model
        a. Supersymmetry
        b. Unified Theories
        c. More......

II. Fusion
    1. Energy Sources....a comparison (mechanics, by-products, resources)
        a. Fossil fuels
        b. Solar
        c. Thermal
        d. Nuclear
            i. Fission
            ii. Fusion
    2. Plasmas
    3. Creating conditions for fusion.
        a. Hot Fusion
            i. Tokomaks
            ii. Lasers
            iii. What's next?
        b. Cold Fusion.......what happened?
        c. Current status on achieving fusion as a viable energy source.

III. Cosmology
    1. Preliminaries
        a. Units and "dinner napkin" calculations
    2. Dynamics of the Universe
        a. Describing Spacetime
        b. Density Evolution
        c. The Newtonian Perspective
        d. Time Evolution
    3. Cosmological Models
        a. Cosmological tests
        b. The age test
        c. The modern picture
            i. The Supernova Cosmology Project
    4. History of the Universe
        a. Particle Cosmology
        b. Temperature and Density
        c. The "Hawking Story"
        d. The Monopole Problem
        e. Cosmic Puzzles
            i. Must we understand initial conditions?
            ii. The flatness puzzle
            iii. Causality
            iiii. The horizon puzzle
            iiiii Other puzzles
    5. Hubble Expansion
        a. Inflation
            i. Potential dominated matter
            ii. Inflationary cosmology
            iii. The homogeneity puzzle
            iiii Inflation, inhomogeneity, and the horizon
    6. Nucleosynthesis
        a. Universal equilibrium
            i. Thermal conditions
            ii. Interactions
    7. Cosmic Background Radiation
        a. The observations
        b. What they mean.
    8. Cosmic structure formation
        a. The Newtonian perspective
        b. The Robertson Walker version.
        c. Stellar Evolution....the life cycles of stars.
            i. Where stars come from.
            ii. Childhood, middle and old-age.
            iii. What happens to them when they die.