PHYS 298 OWL

Topical offerings of technical interest, skills, and knowledge in physics, and its practice, intended to augment the existing curriculum at the introductory level. Course Information: Approved for Letter and S/U grading. May be repeated in separate terms up to 12 credit hours if topics vary. Prerequisite: See Class Schedule or departmental course information for topics and prerequisites. For students with freshman or sophomore standing.

You will learn to do remarkable things. By the end of the first week you will calculate the trajectory of a relativistic starship and confirm an insight of Ramanujan, the "Man Who Knew Infinity." A week after that you will generate diagrams of spacetime curvature around black holes. You will determine the slingshot trajectory for a tour of the gas giants and calculate pi using simulated toothpicks. There will be chaos, and fractal geometry, and pattern recognition in noisy environments. You will learn that a Python is not just a snake, nor a Spyder just an arachnid. And you will be pioneers: you are going to help us change the way we teach undergraduate physics at the University of Illinois.