FALL
2007 HONORS COURSES
HONR 279W The Solar System
Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Dr. William McDonough, Department of Geology
(credit may not be earned for both HONR 279W and GEOL
212)
We are situated on a modest-sized planet in a planetary
system that includes a great diversity of planet types. We don’t yet
know whether planetary systems like ours are common in the universe.
Why are the planets within our solar system so diverse? How did they
form and evolve? What makes Earth so special for life? Could life have
evolved on other planets within our own solar system? Recent major news
items that bear on these issues include the purported discovery of fossil
life forms in a meteorite that may have come from Mars, and the possible
existence of liquid water oceans under the icy surface of Europa, a
moon of Jupiter. Virtually every week, a major news item appears regarding
some aspect of planetary study, past, present, or future.
This course is designed to explore the concepts upon
which our understanding of solar system formation and evolution are
based. In this course, we will be particularly interested in examining
the logical and intuitive thought processes that have led to our generally
“accepted” ideas about how and when the solar system formed and evolved.
For example, one aspect of the course will be to consider the age of
the solar system and critically examine the techniques that have been
used to constrain the age. An equally important task of this course
is to discuss and highlight the many things about the solar system that
we do not know or understand, and explore future experiments that may
help to reduce these gaps in our knowledge. Present and future tax dollars
will likely pay for some of this exploration, so it is critical that
a well-educated voter understand the issues involved.
This course is divided into three major sections: 1)
solar system formation and early evolution, including an overview of
the evidence supplied by meteorites 2) survey of the inner solar system,
particularly the Earth and moon, and 3) an overview of the rest of the
planetary system. Grading will be based on exams, class participation,
brief in-class presentations and a research paper.
Required Reading:
The New Solar System (Beatty, Collins Petersen and Chaikin, eds).
CORE Physical Sciences, non-lab [PS]
