Todays lecture was about Louis Pasteur. I like how she started out asking a few questions for us to answer. I think that his most striking characteristic was his drive, passion and dedication. I think his greatest accomplishment was his idea if the role of germs in causing disease and his anthrax vaccine. I think his motivation was to help people. She then went over the time line of Pasteur and what was true from the movie. We discussed Pasteurs experiment where he boiled broth to see if he could sterilize the broth. He used a unique flask so that the microbes would be trapped and there would be no growth in the medium. She should us pictures of the laboratory that he made in his parents home. It was really cool to see how modern it was and how nice it was. Another thing that was interesting to me is that he had to blow his own glassware for the test tubes or flasks and make his own chemicals for experiments. She said that Pasteur was really a microbe physiologist because he studied the diseases of so many things. Overall this lecture was quite interesting. I actually liked the Pasteur movie and I think that is because I possibly had more prior knowledge of his than most of the other people we have discussed in class.
Author: petronzio.1
Dale Gnidovec- Theresa Petronzio
Today we went to Orton Hall to visit the geology museum and listen to Dale Gnidovec lecture. He talked to us about fossils and the geology of the building. He talked about his trip to London and Paris with the group two years ago. He discussed some things that he saw on the trip. He also talked about the first prehistoric animals to be discovered by scientists which to be honest I can’t remember what they were called. He talked about how scientist of the time (1800s) didn’t believe in extinction, which is crazy to me because this seems so obvious now. Dale talked about the various species of dinosaurs, when their fossils were discovered and when they were brought to museums. I think it was very cool how knowledgeable he was about dinosaurs and how passionate he was about museums. He even talked about Napoleon and the Rosetta Stone, which is how they were able to translate the egyptian hieroglyphics. I thought it was really cool that he explained what Columbus looked like millions of years ago. He also talked about that Ohio is not really known for its minerals, more its fossils, but there was one called Celestite I think that was on display at the British museum. I thought his presentation was very interesting and he was quite a funny guy. I liked that we got to go on a little field trip, it made the lecture a little more interesting because we were in a different room than usual which was a pretty nice change of pace. He also passed around some fossils which was really really cool to see these first hand.
Interpreting the History of Science- Theresa Petronzio
Dr. Otter came in and started talking about the scientific revolution. He even discussed how Shelley’s Frankenstein was written to criticize science, which is interesting because I have read that book before and wondered why and how it came about. He talked about science and how it is progress. He pretty much discussed how science progressed through history. He discussed several books to get to the point of why kuhn wrote about what he wrote. Fact is when we have agreed to stop probing at something and just accept it. I thought this talk was very interesting because he talked about Kuhn which is the book we are reading in class. This was helpful to hear about because it made the book make just a little more sense because it is very difficult to understand this book. He explained paradigm as sort of a set of thoughts, beliefs, experiments, etc. which form established consensus of a given field at a given time. Not gonna lie I didn’t really understand fully what exactly the simple definition of paradigm was until right now. These are things that pretty much everyone agrees on. He then began to discuss some of the paradigms that Kuhn discusses. He explained normal science in terms of Kuhn, which was experiments that don’t change the paradigm.He explained anomaly as something that doesn’t fit the normal paradigm, we usually label these as pseudoscience. Eventually accumulated anomalies lead to a shift of a paradigm, abandonment of an old one changed to a new one. He concluded with the argument of what Kuhn says which is that history is nonlinear and it is a series of calm and then periods of rupture (paradigm shift).
Theresa Petronzio- Hawking
Dr. Mathur came in to talk to us about Stephen Hawking. He began to tell us a little about black holes, a star will burn and begin to shrink, until it becomes a white dwarf, which is somewhat stable. He also talked about a runaway collapse, which will just become more dense as it shrinks and have more gravity. Then all the mass comes to a single point that is known as a black hole. Singularity kinda means that that thing is infinite, and we don’t really know how to deal with it. Hawking found something called Hawking radiation that lead to a disastrous problem called the black hole information loss paradox, which is what made him famous. Hawking basically discovered that if you put an electron very close to a black hole, its total energy is negative. The particles leaving the black hole are known as hawking radiation. If you make a black hole you basically defy all laws of physics. If you go beyond the horizon of the black hole, this is where you can never come back. Dr. Mathurs style of presentation kept it pretty interesting. His drawings made it a little easier to understand because I am a visual learner. I also liked that he gave the opportunity for us to ask questions if we had any during the lecture because it broke up the lecture a bit and kept it interesting.
Theresa Petronzio- Science and Religion
Today, Dr. Goldish started off reading a passage from “Angles and Demons”. I really enjoyed his passion behind what he was discussing, and his anger about how false what they were saying in the novel really was. He then began discussing the Scientific Enlightenment, which he said basically began with Copernicus’s idea. He gave evidence that there wasn’t conflict with Copernicus and the church because he was the church. He brought in Kuhn, which I think was good because he explained paradigm shifts a little more. The way he presented material was in a very interesting way, he was very passionate about it, which made it easier to listen to because you could tell it was a very important topic to him. His main point is that there is no warfare between science and theology. The idea that these two things had a war between them was completely foreign to people during that day and age. He then began discussing Kepler who dealt with planetary motion and mathematics. He wanted to suggest an elliptical orbit, but it was hard for him to even say, but as soon as he theorized it, all the problems went away. He talked a little about Galileo as well, which I have learned about in many other classes. This talk was very interesting because we learned about things that I have learned before in other classes, just in greater detail and from someone who has more expertise on this information.
Women in Science- Theresa Petronzio
In todays lecture, we learned about various women that had influences in science. The first was Margaret Cavendish who was the first woman to be invited to a Royal Society meeting. We next discussed Caroline Herschel who helped her brother build telescopes and she developed a mathematical approach to astronomy, as well as nebulas, star clusters and comets. Mary Anning discovered various fossils and dinosaur bones. Elise Widdowson helped determine the rations during WWII which is very interesting to me because I took a class about WWII and the Holocaust last semester. Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin pioneered protein crystallography and solved the structures of many common proteins that I have learned about. We also reviewed Rosalind Franklin which I have learned about many times. We learned about Anne McLaren who helped with in vitro fertilization. Then we moved onto French ladies in science. The first we talked about was Emilie du Chatelet who translated Newtons Principia into french and added her own derivation of the conservation of energy. Next we learned of Marie-Anne Lavoisier who helped her husband Antoine out in the lab. Marie Curie won two Nobel prizes for radioactivity. There are not many famous women in science compared to men because of their social positions and the view that they were “helpers”. We also went over some things to do before we leave for the travel portion of this class. This was a very helpful thing to go over.
A Tale of Two Chemists- Theresa Petronzio
I like how Dr. Cogan started with a brief summary of what he was going to be talking about. Then he went into talking about a few of the books that he enjoyed. I thought it was a good interjection to start with some questions before really diving into the material, these questions were things I’ve never thought of before and it was very eye opening to give them thought. It was interesting to hear about what people back then thought air was, a single substance, etc. It’s crazy to see how much science has come along over the years. We also went over some of the big events during the enlightenment. I don’t think I ever learned about all of these things. To be a member of the Royal Society, we learned that you had to be somewhat well off or have another good job in order to be a part of it. In this lecture we learned about Joseph Priestly and the interesting theory that because he had tuberculosis as a child may have been why he was so intrigued with air. I have never heard of Phlogiston before so that was cool to hear about. Priestly did a lot of interesting experiments throughout the course of his life, with oxygen, nitrogen and other things. We also learned about Lavoisier. We did not have time to watch the movie, but we heard a little about it during the end of the lecture. Overall this was an interesting lecture about two important chemists.
Theresa Petronzio- After John Snow
Dr. Root came in to talk to us about John Snow. John Snow is held up as the father of modern epidemiology and one of the first health geographers. He made the map and studied cholera, but his early work leading up to cholera studies were really complex and they aren’t heard about much. I like how Dr. Root brought in topics we could relate to such as GIS and excel to explain how technology has changed for map making and in general. This made the talk a little more relatable and interesting. I always like when people suggest books to read, so I think that it was awesome that she suggested “The Ghost Map”, this book seems kind of interesting and I might look into it. I have heard of and studied miasma, Cholera, and the germ theory before in my microbiology class (which was one of my favorite classes) so I thought this talk was very interesting to learn a little more background on a historical level. Paradigm shift means that science is not steady, I really liked that she brought in Thomas Kunn since we are reading that, its nice to get another view of the book other than just reading it. I think it was interesting to learn about current paradigm shifts such as the “One Health” concept. I learned about vaccines in my Bio 3401 class, I think it was interesting to hear about her research on vaccines and just able to confirm some of the things I have already learned. Overall, it was really interesting to be hear about her accomplishments and scientific discoveries in epidemiology. I also liked that she left time for questions and she really explained the answers really well.
Theresa Petronzio- Darwin, Evolution, and Why it Matters
Dr. Carol Anelli came in to speak to us today about Darwin and his importance in evolution. She mentioned that Darwin’s theory is extremely important because his findings are strengthened as new technology is advanced, he laid a great ground work for the future findings. Darwin’s theory and evolution has been used and been taken over by many fields beyond biology and medicine. Another thing that was discussed was how his theory kind of conflicted with theology. I think that Dr. Anelli did a great job of presenting this material in an interesting way. I like how she broke up the lecture by asking us to answer some questions on Darwin, this challenged my thinking and personally helped me learn more about Darwin. I always knew Darwin was important, but I never really thought of the scale of importance that he really had until today. I really enjoyed this lecture, it was fun, interesting, and organized well.