Brandeis Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (BOLLI)

Moving Right Along: How and Why Things Move the Way They Do

Course Number

SC1-5b-Thu3-S25

Study Group Leader (SGL)

Jerry Baum

Location

This course will take place in person at 60 Turner Street. The room will be equipped with a HEPA air purifier.   

5-Week Course

April 24 - May 22

Description

When you walk, it’s the sidewalk that forces you forward. There is no such thing as centrifugal force. Rockets do not move because of the action-reaction law. While you sit reading this, your chair pushes you up.  

Not intuitive? That’s because our experience of the world is not necessarily the way the world actually works. Yet, how and why things move as they do is so ‘obvious’ that our (mistaken) beliefs have persisted for over two thousand years. And that’s where our course starts, with Aristotle’s concepts of motion. You’ll then meet (circa 1500-1650) the brave men who dared defy the Church with their observations: astronomers Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, and the first experimentalist, Galileo. They set the stage for the intellectual revolution of Sir Isaac Newton (c. 1700).

Newton’s three Laws of Motion are anything but obvious. For example, moving objects will continue in a straight line with unchanging speed, forever; something he, nor anybody else, has ever observed. His Laws apply equally to motions on Earth and to motions in the Heavens, destroying a centuries-old dichotomy. Newton’s explorations of how objects move, and of so many other subjects, gave the world a new way of thinking, one based on observation and experiment, not on superstition and magic. The course concludes with a whirlwind visit to Einstein’s space- and time-bending Theory of General Relativity, which fills a major hole in Newton’s explanation of gravity.

This course is aimed at non-technical students, but those with a technical background are certainly welcome. 

Group Leadership Style

Roughly the same amount of lecture and discussion. The SGL will physically demonstrate many of the concepts being discussed.  Sometimes students will be invited to participate.

Course Materials

There will be some book recommendations for optional reading, but no books will be required.  Online readings and video viewings will be suggested.  Because this course is about motion, videos, rather than static text, are most appropriate for learning the material.  

Preparation Time

 Roughly an hour: to read online articles and to view online videos.  Also, to observe and note examples of motions as you go about your daily activities.

Biography

Jerry Baum is a science communicator, who can speak "science" to both technical and non-technical audiences. Those audiences have included high school students, research colleagues at conferences, and museum visitors. Jerry has BS and MS degrees in physics, with an undergraduate minor in education. He taught high school physics for ten years, where he emphasized lecture-demonstrations and hands-on laboratory experiences. Jerry spent twenty-seven years on the research staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. While there, he volunteered on two collaborations with the Museum of Science. For both, he played a key role ‘translating’ between Lincoln engineers and Museum staff members.