One fifth of your final grade in this class rides on a presentation that you will make to the class on a topic in the history of science. The idea here is that you will research a topic from a preset list, or suggest one of your own that I approve in advance, and do the same amount of work you would usually expect to do for a five-page paper (about 1600-2000 words). You may write out your entire presentation ahead of time and simply read it when the time comes, but I do not require that you do so. Your presentation should take eight to ten minutes and it will be followed by up to five minutes worth of questions from the rest of the class and from me.

You should prepare this presentation on the assumption that most of your audience will have no special expertise in the field on which you are presenting. Since people will be speaking on topics in all of the major fields in physical science, this assumption will undoubtedly be correct. You may assume that people are generally familiar with the most common theoretical terms from a science - mass in physics, species in biology, etc. - but anything more specific than that should receive at least a quick definition and clarification. More important will be the ways in which you explain the problems that the scientists in each case were out to solve and how those specific problems relate to more general sorts of theoretical projects. For instance, if you were explaining the significance of Watson and Crick's discovery that DNA has a double helix structure, you should be able to explain that this was significant because of the light it shed on how genetic information could be passed along and thus solved some of the classic problems of genetics and biology. Most of your presentation should be about the details of the actual work those scientists did, but you should frame them in that larger picture. (As a piece of advice, it is usually more effective to set that stage in an introduction than in a conclusion.)

A list of topics is included here and you may select from that. There will be no more than one presentation on any one of these topics. Having only ten weeks of classes and only about five classes to devote to presentations, it will probably not be possible to have everyone present in front of the class. So we can probably fit about twenty-five presentations into the schedule. The remaining members of the class will be allowed to write out their material as a paper instead. I will allow people to write papers on topics that are being presented in class, but those papers would be due on the day of the other student's presentation of that topic.

Note on the syllabus that the presentations will be grouped roughly by discipline, i.e. the physics presentations will all be on the same day.  There is some overlap in areas like physical chemistry and biochemistry, so I would be willing to negotiate on those presentations.  The idea here is to have a relatively cohesive set of topics on any given day rather than an unrelated mishmash.  I will make exceptions to this procedure only if you come to me in advance and give me reasons, or in case of medical or family emergency.

So you are going to submit three pieces of information to me by Monday, April 7; (i) A preference for a topic from the list or a suggested topic of your own (which I will consider), (ii) A preference for one of the four dates on the syllabus on which you would like to present, and (iii) A YES/NO preference on whether you would like to write a paper rather than presenting before the class. If you like, you can include more than one preference for each of the first two - more than one topic and more than one date - and I will try to accommodate second and third preferences if I can. This may still leave some people presenting on days they would rather not and without their favorite topic, but I will do everything possible to work these details out to everyone's satisfaction. Keep in mind that the more esoteric a topic you choose, the more likely you will get to pursue it.

If you cannot find a topic you feel comfortable writing on from below, I will consider topics that you yourself write. The list is fairly short on physics questions, simply because I have studied fairly little physics. But keep in mind that those topics need to be original and historically based as well. Not every topic will be acceptable.

Suggested Topics
1. Explain the Atwood Machine and its relation to the confirmation of Newtonian mechanics.
2. Explain the methods of Cavendish's experiments to determine a value for the gravitational constant in the 1790's.
3. Recount the demise of the caloric theory of combustion. What sorts of things did caloric theory do well and what did it fail to account for?
4. Dalton formulated his atomic theory in light of Lavoisier's discovery of the law of conservation of matter and Proust's law of constant composition. Explain what these two laws mean and how they gave rise to Dalton's theory.
5. Becquerel hypothesized that flourescent compounds would emit X-rays and confirmed this, marking the beginning of nuclear chemistry. Explain the experiments he did to confirm his hypothesis and what the significance of this was for chemistry.
6. Explain Rutherford's "gold foil" experiment and how it suggested a model for atoms.
7. Recount J.J. Thomson's work in discovering electrons by his work with cathode ray tubes.
8. Explain the principles Mendeleev used to design the Periodic Table of Elements and the regular variations of chemical properties that emerged in light of his design.
9. Explain the differences between the Bronsted-Lowry theory of acids and the Lewis theory of acids. What problems did the latter solve.
10. What are autocatalytic models and what do they contribute to biology (if there are any)?
11. What is kin selection and how does it alter evolutionary theory? Why was it suggested?
12. Explain Broca's development of his hypothesis about the role of certain parts of the brain (later known as the Broca's Area) in the use of language.
13. Explain the aims of Martin Cline's early experiments into the treatment of beta-zero-thalassemia and how they laid the groundwork for subsequent developments in gene therapy.
14. Explain the work and discoveries of Tycho Brahe and his relevance to the acceptance of the Copernican model in astronomy.
15. How did Boyle and Lavoisier change the concept of an "element" from what came before them? What did this mean for chemistry?
16. What were the guiding principles of phrenology? Do any of them persist in modern psychology?
17. How did Newton's theory of colors break from his predecessors? How did his experiments confirm this view?
18. Recount Jospeh Lister's development of antiseptics. What were the clinical conditions that actually led to his conclusions?
19. Recount Louis Pasteur's development of vaccines for diseases such as anthrax and rabies. What sorts of ideas did he introduce and refine in the process?
20. How did Millikan determine the charge of electrons using his wife's perfume bottle?
21. Explain Einstein's account of the photoelectric effect. What problems did it solve?
22. Galileo never really dropped anything from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to prove anything about gravity. Explain the methods he actually developed to prove his conclusions.
23. How did Galileo's interpretation of the motion of a pendulum differ from Aristotelian theories that preceded him? What phenomena was he more able to explain by his model?
24. What is cladistics? What is its relation to traditional evolutionary theory?
25. Explain how quantum cryptography would work. (You only have to say a little about the mathematics of cryptography here. How the quantum physics affects the process is the really important part.)
26. Explain the Michelson-Morley experiment. What was it intended to show and how did it backfire?
27. How was Gestalt theory a response to structuralist psychology? What sorts pf phenomena did Gestalt theorists see themselves as better able to explain than their predecessors?
28. Recount Schachter and Singer's famous 1962 study on emotion. What were their methods and conclusions?
29. Recount Stanley Milgram's experiments in obedience to authority and the variations in subject reaction he found with variations in method (i.e. were there cases in which people were less likely to be obedient?).
30. Explain the difference between serial and parallel computing architectures and what advantages a parallel model (or "neural net") presents over traditional conputational models.