JOSHUA SHAEVITZ: We have these intuitions for how
things work in the real world.
They're all based on the rules that science imposes
on matter and materials.
And so making the connections to the underlying science,
I think is very powerful.
There isn't any magic it turns out.
It's all based on science.
So we have our coffee molecules.
The coffee molecules are going faster than the air molecules.
On average, they will be imparting positive energy
to the air molecules.
And that's going to happen over and over.
And so then on average, you lose energy to the air
and you cool down the coffee.
The seminar sort of struck me as a way of introducing science
to non-scientists.
And I don't mean subject matter exactly, oh,
how does the ball roll down hills,
or why did chemical reactions happen, but more
how science actually works in the real world.
Who decides what science gets to be done?
Who funds science?
And that for non-scientists, this
was almost maybe more important than understanding
a few nitty-gritty facts.
ALICE XUE: I feel like classes in high school are very focused
and don't really teach you what science is in general.
Like, you might have a chemistry class or a bio class,
but you might not know what scientists nowadays are doing
or what methods they used to figure out
those kinds of things that you're learning.
SYLVIE THODE: And in this course,
we have people from sciences, politics.
I think almost every realm, we have a very, very diverse
group.
And then Professor Shaevitz brings it
back to what we were talking about.
I think that's a very important aspect to have in that course.
ALICE XUE: He sort of wants to include everybody.
And I think it's very interesting how it
bridges all those disciplines.
HARRISON CERUTO: I think Professor Shaevitz does
a good job facilitating, you know,
conversation, and debate, and discourse.
But we're also still learning.
And it's still a lesson.
So I think it's a good kind of back-and-forth environment.
JOSHUA SHAEVITZ: I wanted to have
them sort of engaged in kind of a hands-on way
with various aspects of the way science is really done.
And one of the major projects that
sort of has spanned the entire semester
is a scientific proposal to bust the myth.
They had to choose a common myth to, motivate
why it was an interesting question,
and discuss the history of the myth,
and to propose a scientific experiment that
will bust the myth, as the MythBusters would say.
And as part of the semester-long process,
we did a grant review panel, which is part of the way
that we, as a society, decide what science
gets focused on or done.
So I think that in many ways connects really
to the way that we as scientists do things in the real world.
SPEAKER 1: This is a good one.
SPEAKER 2: Thank you.
SPEAKER 3: Oh, it looks cool from the bottom.
SYLVIE THODE: So my proposal is on whether or not
the house in the Disney Pixar movie "Up" could actually fly.
I proposed building a scale model and then seeing
if you could lift the house of the model
with normal-sized party balloons.
And when I was doing research for my proposal,
there's this whole new theory about these giant,
giant balloons.
The theory is that you could lift something
like a plane that's fallen.
You have real-life applications for this idea
of lifting something heavy.
And it sounds very simple, but it's
applicable in the real world.
And I think just by doing research,
even though this one is a little bit whimsical,
it just gives you more information on that subject.
JOSHUA SHAEVITZ: My real hope is that we can in some small way
just change the way the public thinks
about science, scientists, and the scientific endeavor.
The ability of the public to critically analyze
some of this information on their own,
where did it come from, can they look in a little deeper,
how can they compare different types of information that
are coming from opposite sides of the spectrum
in the public sphere, that's something that I really think
is important and doesn't happen much.
SYLVIE THODE: When I see things in the news that
has to do with science or something like that,
now I can sort of read it and be able to glean more out of what
they're saying, because I've been exposed
to scientific writing and the scientific methods that
are often used.
HARRISON CERUTO: There is a purpose beyond science.
You know, we'll never know when we need something.
Twenty years from now that research could
lead to some groundbreaking cure for a disease
or some new innovation designs.
JOSHUA SHAEVITZ: What we're partly doing
is we're trying to link sociology
and the way governments and economics works with the way
science is done, the way things have been discussed in history.
We had some nice lectures on historical perspectives
about evidence, and science, and mythological uses of myth.
Bringing these connections together,
I think, takes what could be a disparate set of broad topics
as a liberal arts education and puts them together
into a real, synthesized view of human knowledge
and human behavior and existence.
[MUSIC PLAYING]