PMU199Y

[Your professor]

Readings

This course is designed around student participation. As part of your participation duty, you are expected to read two things each week before coming to class:

  1. online lecture notes
  2. the readings listed below

The reason for these pre-class readings is simple: to ensure that you are well prepared and comfortable with talking about the material in front of other students.

Fall

Please note: Week numbers list are the week the reading is for, so you will want to start your reading a few days ahead of time. Greene page numbers are given for the version of the book with ISBN 978-0-393-05858-1; page numbers may differ in your copy so I also list subsections by title in quotation marks.

  1. [none; first class]
  2. Greene Chapter 1
  3. Greene Chapter 2 pp23-46 from Introduction to [end of] Who Is Moving, Anyway?
  4. Rest of Greene Chapter 2 pp 47-52 and Greene Chapter 3 pp 53-72 from Introduction to A Few Caveats
  5. Rest of Greene Chapter 3 pp 73-84
  6. Prof. Susskind's article on the Black Hole Information Paradox and Greene Chapter 13 pp 333-338 Black Hole Entropy
  7. Greene Chapter 4 pp 85-97 from Introduction to What Are the Lumps?
  8. [Fall Oral Presentations]
  9. Rest of Greene Chapter 4 pp 97-116
  10. [Fall Test]
  11. Greene Chapter 5 (all of it) and Greene Chapter 6, especially pp 142-146 Unification through String Theory, and pp 152-164 from Gravity and Quantum Mechanics in String Theory to The More Precise Answer
  12. Greene Chapter 8 (all of it) and Greene Chapter 10 pp 231-254 from Introduction to A Minimum Size

Winter/Spring

  1. Greene Chapter 12 [cursory reading only; no need to dig into prior unassigned chapters]
  2. [none]
  3. Greene Chapter 14
  4. Greene Chapter 14
  5. Professor Park's article on the Seven Warning Signs of Voodoo Science
  6. Sagan Chapter 12
  7. [none]
  8. [Spring Oral Presentations]
  9. [none]
  10. [Spring Test]
  11. [none]
  12. [none]