Monsters
Week One.
What are our goals in this class? To talk about monsters, and link the imagination to what is real and what we are trying to learn about. Our first meeting we will just get to know each other and talk about the semester. What we will doing is progressing from monster to popular understanding of science to the science itself, each time, using several pretty awesome examples.
Today, our first day, we'll get started with Godzilla! This mythical beast was born in a time of great fears of what manmade radiation could do to our natural world (and to us). Your assigned reading prior to next week will require you to think about what happens when we find something unusual in nature, and our first fear is that it is caused by radiation. After you read this, set a timer for 5 minutes and write about what this means to you, and bring this to class next week.
Week Two.
Today we will get to talk to a scientist who is studying the effects of massive radiation release on wildlife. Cara Love, PhD student in the Odum School of Ecology, will come to discuss her work near Chernobyl (click the link to learn more - this disaster happened well before you were born!) and at the Savannah River Ecology Lab during today's class.
We will read some of our thoughts on Godzilla, mutated daisies, and radiation, and think about how our fear of monsters can be related to what we know (or don't know) about science. Before next class, try to log in and post some or all of your thoughts on man-made monsters to the blog on this website! Or, you can comment on other blogs or pages as appropriate. Be sure to include information about your resources, whether you Googled for other stories, videos, etc. or read something from a science journal!
Week Three.
Librarian Ian Thomas gives a great presentation on how you can find the science papers (and other types of resources) you need to succeed in your time at UGA! Following class, you should read this paper by Gopen & Swan linked here, to get us all warmed up for reading about science in the primary literature as well as more popular websites, blogs, and other sources.
Week Four.
Today we are going to shift gears to a different kind of beast... a presumably natural, evolved one that we just don't know very well.
Note the date of that report. What do we think? What did you see? How could we learn more about the organism captured on video? What sort of science would you envision doing, and what training would you need ahead of time?
Here's another, not too far away. Hmm, two data points.
Before next week, read and write a report on this page that discusses genetic diversity and possible yeti fur! Don't worry, we will come back to Sasquatch...and remember your reports can be on the blog, or you may even start new pages on this wiki if you choose!
Week Five.
Today we are ready, I think, to talk about reading through the actual science literature. Some papers can be real monsters to get through, others can be relatively easy. Either way, this is how scientists communicate what they know and what they are learning to the rest of the world.
We will discuss some of the terminology and methods and results from the yeti study that you read this week. Now I think we are ready to read a full paper for next class, and as always please post your responses and related thoughts to the blog!
OH man you can bring this back to the ivory-billed woodpecker dude.
See front page of in-construction site, and Evernote, for your set of ideas....
Godzilla and fears of radiation, to Fukushima flowers, to why maybe not news.nationalgeographic.com (so learn skepticism) to Stacey Lance and exploring the diversity around Chernobyl...
(something like, talk about Godzilla clip, the origins of Godzilla, along with our introductions etc. on the first class, think about how real science associated)
Class 2 is the Fukushima flowers and info about Stacey Lance research, how radiation affects mutations (really) and what we know about this influence on biology. Cara Love, PhD student, will come to discuss her work in today's class.
Class 3 is Librarian. After class they are assigned to read Gopn & Swan for following weeks (so now they are ready to read some science).
2. Library
3. Sasquatch 2 weeks to distribution of real things
4. Density of unicorns what to learn?
Read these papers for next week.
Let's start off with figuring out where things are, and what we learn from tracking.... SASQUATCH!!! You'll find this paper more reachable than the other one, even if it does involve unicorns.
This second paper is much more difficult - we won't get into the details so much here, but will identify what makes reading papers like this difficult and how terminology is used, while still talking about what this study does in attempting to advance science through unicorns.
Week Two. Now that you have your feet wet, let's think more about why reading science can be hard, and how we can make it better.
Read the paper by Gopen & Swan linked here, and then find a paragraph from one of last week's papers and try rewriting it in a way where the complicated terms aren't so bad. You will work in groups on this on the wiki. So don't stress, help each other out!
Week Three. 9-2-15. Learning how to find out more.
Ian Thomas gives a great presentation on how you can find the science papers (and other types of resources) you need to succeed in your time at UGA!
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