Overview
The current advances in cosmology instill the very nature of the scientific approach and the promise of scientific discovery. It is essential to introduce our students to the wonders of the cosmos as they are currently being discovered and to generate enthusiasm about the remarkable scientific advances. This course will attempt to impart to the students the most contemporary understanding of the state of the Universe. An additional purpose is to discuss and develop the subtle scientific reasoning that allows scientists to make the claims they do about what we currently know. My goal is to create a unit which, as accurately as possible, presents the current state of our knowledge of the Universe so that my students will be able to comprehend the current developments in cosmology and potentially will be interested in contributing to the scientific pursuit of these sciences. I will incorporate this cosmology unit into the high school physics courses I teach as part of the modern physics curriculum. The unit is written for first year physics courses, comprised of 11 th and 12 th graders, and can be adapted to different levels by increasing or decreasing the sophistication of the mathematical and conceptual ideas that are presented so that it is appropriate for gifted, honors or general first year physics courses. This unit will be presented at the end of the year once we have covered the basic concepts of Newtonian physics and improved the students' mathematical skills in algebra and geometry. There are supplemental materials and topics for discussion that are particularly intellectually challenging that are meant for an Advanced Placement or second year physics course. In my general science course of 9 th grade students, I will introduce the unit as part of the Universe curriculum. I will simplify the unit conceptually and mathematically to make it appropriate for ninth grade mainstream students.
The unit focuses on preparing students to evaluate how we know what cosmology claims to know about the Universe. This will be achieved by focusing on five essential issues in cosmology and developing a critical and discerning comprehension of the nature of these concepts. The goal is to create a skeptical and exploratory approach to the pursuit of knowledge that exemplifies the scientific approach. In effect, the vision of this curriculum unit is to learn science by doing science. However, in this context, doing science is not only performing labs to obtain experimental data, but more significantly, in the study of cosmology, it is to apply known data to figure out how we know what we claim to know and to determine if in fact our conclusions can be validated.
I intend to do this by exploring five major questions. First, what is the evidence for the Big Bang Theory? Second, how old is the Universe? Third, are we at the center of the Universe? Fourth, what is the evidence for the existence of dark matter? And lastly, what is the evidence for the existence of dark energy?
It is my hope to delve into these five questions with the intention of developing a deep enough understanding that my students will be able to explain their conclusions in their own words and thereby internalize the scientific knowledge. In addition, I hope that this process will give them the discerning skills to apply the scientific method of questioning, finding evidence, evaluating the evidence and creating conclusions based on their evaluation that will encourage them to utilize this critical process more broadly in their decision making.
This unit is intended to cover ten lessons in two weeks but can be implemented in part if it is so desired. Perhaps this unit could also be implemented by teachers, outside of science, who are interested in introducing the concepts of cosmology which are so broadly applicable to our human condition. The scientific background in this unit could certainly be applied to the creation of myths about the origin of the Universe within any discipline. In addition, this unit on cosmology could be utilized by other disciplines to compare the scientific approach to knowledge to the nature of the pursuit in other disciplines. Is all of our "knowledge" equal? Are there commonalities among our approaches or is it beneficial to be aware of the differences within our approaches? Does asking why we are here, how did we get here or where are we going, make us more human?
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