Have you ever heard of weird, unsettling statements like "time goes slower if you move faster" or "space and time are all relative"? Turns out, while unintuitive, relativity is not so spooky! We will learn about the two simple foundational axioms of relativity, and the beautiful formalism and strange predictions that emerge from it. Spacetime diagrams, the metric, Lorentz transformations, time dilation, length contraction, thought experiments with trains and light beams and mirrors--all in one crash course on relativity!

What are the things we see in the sky—the sun, the stars, and the weird stars that “wander” about? Where are we in the universe? How big is the universe? What IS the universe? Human beings have been answering these questions for thousands of years with increasing precision, and now we (think that we) have a pretty good picture of what our universe looks like. In this class, we’ll learn about what we know, and moreover, how we know what we know. From ancient Greek astronomy to modern cosmology, we’ll put ourselves in the shoes of Eratosthenes, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Hubble, and other great thinkers and discuss what they did—and didn’t—see in the universe.