First-Year Seminars 110NT - Space, Time, and Entropy

The formulation of the laws of thermodynamics and discovery of relativity in the late 1800s and early 1990s had profound implications for our understanding of the universe. The idea that the entropy of the universe is always increasing, for example, had a deeply destabilizing effect on the Enlightenment idea of a clockwork universe that is ordered and unchanging. We will study the laws of thermodynamics and the ideas of relativity, with the goal of understanding their impact on science, art, literature, and society. Topics will include heat engines, reversible and irreversible processes, chaos, the heat death of the universe, Maxwell's Demon, information theory, and the directionality of time.

Mount Holyoke first-year students only, by placement.