Foundations of Science

Using modern, student-centered, active and collaborative learning techniques, students will engage — through field observations, in-class experiments, computer simulations, and selected readings — with a range of ideas and techniques designed to integrate and anchor scientific habits of mind. Throughout the term, all students will satisfy a detailed set of rubrics by documenting their learning in reflection postings designed to serve as a future reference for how they, individually, went from not understanding an idea to understanding it. Topics covered will include statistics, basic probability, a variety of calculational skills, graph reading, and estimation — all aimed at elucidating such concepts as energy, matter, cells, and genes in the context of astronomy, biology, chemistry, earth science, neuroscience, and physics.