Photo: David
Parks. Chamaeleo pardalis, from Madagascar. Click on the
picture for more.
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Wednesdays
6 — 10 pm Longhouse 1007b
Saturdays 9 am — 5 pm Lecture Hall 3 Apr 5, 19; May 3, 17, 31.
CRN: 30262 Credits: 8
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Allen Mauney
360 867 5458
mauneya[at]evergreen.edu
(use
@ in place of [at])
mail: 3220 Lib
office: 3210 Lib
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Kevin Hogan
360 867 5078
hogan[at]evergreen.edu
(use
@ in place of [at])
mail: 3127 Sem
office: 4163 Sem
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In
this program we will address concepts and phenomena that are improbable
or counterintuitive. Should we distrust an idea just because it’s
unpopular? We will consider a variety of topics in the physical, biological,
and social sciences, and seek to develop the analytical skills for distinguishing
between the probable and the absurd. Credit will be awarded in science,
research methods, and statistics. Students will evaluate the scientific
merit of (controversial) topics of their choice.
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Evolution
At this
site, you can access some excellent study material on evolutionary biology
(see chapters 20 through 25) and a tutorial on natural
selection.
Color
vision
This
site was the source for many of the figures in the lecture on Wednesday
21 May. Here
is a simpler representation of the opponent
processing model of color vision. Here
you can mix light of different colors.
Adaptive
Evolution of Photoreceptors and Visual Pigments in Vertebrates by Shozo
Yokoyama and Ruth Yokoyama, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Vol.
27. (1996), pp. 543-567.
Would you
like to be a tetrachromat?
True
weirdness
Are you still
confused by the metric
system?
Perhaps you'd
like to step into a parallel
universe?
Are
you hearing colors and smelling sounds? Maybe you have
synesthesia!
Weird
Research, Anomalous Physics with lots of links to a world of weird science
Read about
the colossal squid (larger than the merely giant squid) here
and here.
The Annals
of Improbable Research (includes the IgNobel prize winners).
Beware of
the Underground
Meat-Eating Plant!
I think that
the world is a better place because it has Hawaiian
Happyface Spiders in it.
Ride into
space in the Space
Elevator.
Just
plain weirdness
Find out how
to tell if your cow has Mad
Cow Disease
How
fast is Santa Claus?
Not so weird
Read about
the properties
of water (rather weird, actually) and see the phase
diagram (solid, liquid, gas)
A brief
discussion of surface
to volume ratio in biology
