Goals for the segment on Isaac Newton and his predecessors
1. Understand the basic scientific discoveries of Copernicus, Galilei, Brahe, Kepler, and Descartes, how they relate to one another and pave the way for Newton's discoveries. In particular, know what the Copernican theory is, and know Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion.
2. Know the principal discoveries of Newton, including his Laws of Motion and Law of Gravitation.
3. Be familiar with the basic ideas related to the rainbow.
4. Know what a "paradigm shift" is, and how it relates to the discoveries of the scientists who we have discussed here, including Newton.
Goals for the segment on Albert Einstein
1. Know the difference between the 19th century ideas of laws of motion and Einstein's theory about motion.
2. Know the two basic principles of Einstein's special theory of Relativity (SR).
3. Know consequences of SR, including formulas for time and velocity, and the famous equation for energy in terms of mass and the speed of light.
4. Know about the birth and death of stars.
5. Know pertinent facts about Einstein's life.
6. Be familiar with the ideas appearing in the chapters assigned in "Einstein's Dreams."
7. Understand in what way Einstein's SR is a "paradigm shift."
Goals for the segment on chaos
1. Have familiarity with basic terms in the study of chaos: regular vs irregular motion, predictable events vs. unpredictable events vs. random events, sensitive dependence on initial conditions, chaos.
2. Know several applications of chaos: weather, turbulent flow, double pendulum, EEG and EKG.
3. Know about Edward Lorenz, and how he came upon his results concerning long-term weather prediction.
4. Understand how the new ideas of chaos represented a "paradigm shift."