Day 3: Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Post date: Jul 10, 2013 4:42:49 PM

Essential Questions:

1. What tools exist to help us determine what to believe?

2. What did the first moments of the universe look like?

Today, we talked about claims and claim testers (and you read this comic last night). We'll see a lot of new information in this course, and we need to always keep in mind how and why things are said to be true. We watched the Unit 2 lecture: How do we decide what to believe? (Videos: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).

We then transitioned to our first threshold of Big History: The Big Bang. But, before getting into a modern scientific origin story, we looked at origin stories of several cultures and communities. Then, we watched the Unit 2 lecture: What emerged from the Big Bang? (Videos: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

For HW, please

1. Prepare for a Quiz tomorrow on the Big Bang.
2. Review Stokes-Brown p. 1-7 (and take special note of instances where the universe got more complex or more complex things were created), and review the Unit 2 lecture (What emerged from the Big Bang).
3. Answer briefly, on a new sheet of looseleaf: In what ways does the description of the Big Bang incorporate the themes we saw in the origin stories? [to be collected]
4. Complete the two questions on page 30 of the lecture notebook for What Emerged from The Big Bang. [to be discussed in class]