Much of historical European politics would have made more sense if you were there at the time. This class will give you a chance to recreate those politics. Take command of countries in a simple war game and learn about the balance of power by seeing it play out in action. Adapted from game created by Daniel Whalen; run with permission.

Much of historical European politics would have made more sense if you were there at the time. This class will give you a chance to recreate those politics. Take command of countries in a simple war game and learn about the balance of power by seeing it play out in action. Adapted from game created by Daniel Whalen; run with permission.

In this class, we'll be discussing and comparing the philosophies of essentialism and existentialism, and whether or not our life have an inherent purpose. We will be exploring the views of ancient Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle and Plato, as well as the works of early 20th century philosophers Kierkagaard, Hume, and Sartre.

In this class, we will learn the basics of Wolfram Mathematica, with a focus on visualization and modeling of both pure and applied math topics. We will cover topics ranging from probability theory applications (e.g. weather forecast accuracy) to crystal structure modeling to calculus applications. The class will conclude with a surprise application challenge! Mathematica is one of the major programming environments used for modeling in science, engineering, and pure mathematics. (For anyone who has used Wolfram|Alpha, Mathematica is the workhorse of the Wolfram system.) Regardless of programming experience, this class is a great way for students interested in science and engineering to learn to use professional computation software, from an exploratory application-based perspective.