Register to attend Professor John Preston’s lecture series Physics For All! Professor Preston has degrees in physics and physics education and enjoys preparing talks on the relevance of physics to everyday life and to other fields of study such as art, history, and philosophy.
Lecture 1: Physics for (Visual) Art Lovers: a description of color and how we perceive it in nature, paintings, theater lighting, and home lighting. (Tuesday, January 30th)
Lecture 2: Physics for Music Lovers: a description of sound and music and how it is produced by various instruments, how it is affected by music halls like the Galliard, how we detect distance to a source and the limitations (and future) of hearing aids (Tuesday, February 6th)
Lecture 3: Physics for History Buffs: a description of turning points in history that were affected by the knowledge (or ignorance) of physics including Columbus, the Battle of Britain, Midway, German atomic bomb program, and the US nuclear power industry (Tuseday, February 13th)
Lecture 4: Physics for Philosophers Part 1: a description of how physics has influenced our search for answers to the big questions of Where do we come from?, What are we made of?, and Where are we going?. It explores the influence of physics on philosophy including the Greeks, Thomas Aquinas, the enlightenment, the US constitution and Declaration of Independence, to the Big Bang and the Hubble and Webb telescopes . (Tuesday, February 20th)
Lecture 5: Physics for Philosophers Part 2: a description of how physics has influenced our search for answers to the big questions of Where do we come from?, What are we made of?, and Where are we going?. It explores the influence of physics on philosophy including the Greeks, Thomas Aquinas, the enlightenment, the US constitution and Declaration of Independence, to the Big Bang and the Hubble and Webb telescopes . (Tuesday, February 27th)
Lecture series: $100 or $20 per lecture (5 lectures in series)