Splash Droplet Fall 2017
Course Catalog

The way we prepare, enjoy, and understand food has changed more in the last 20 years than in the last 200.

In this class, we will look at how our understanding of food science and best practices in the kitchen have enabled home cooks to produce meals that have never been possible or easy before.

We will leverage insights from the world of restaurant cooking, advances in food science, and techniques from current cooking literature to rediscover something we thought we always understood: food.

Note: This is NOT a cooking class, and we will not be preparing food in class. This class is about how to use science and modern cooking practices to increase your repertoire in the kitchen and really understand what goes on in a pan, oven, or plate.


Prerequisites
None

An introductory course that will expose students to the different aspects of workshopping a hip hop song. Students will learn basic writing structures such as rhyme schemes and flows, as well as be exposed to production and sound engineering aspects.

Do you know an entire sub-genre of popular music from our past was based on a now-discredited pop psychology? Come learn about this music and it’s time. See how this happened and then speculate whether this kind of thing might be in today’s music.


Prerequisites
None

Thoughts are very important for obvious reasons. They tell us everything we know, guide many of our actions, and instill a wide range of both positive and negative feelings within us. But what are they, and how can we learn more about them?
A natural and simple answer is: observe them!
But if we try to observe our thoughts, we quickly realize this is extremely difficult because, for most of our waking life, we are lost in thoughts. Our mind wanders here and there and drags us along with it, seldom, if ever, coming to rest. Because of the erratic nature of the mind, there really isn't space to see our thoughts objectively.
In order to gain distance from thoughts so that they can be observed, it's necessary to develop concentration-- this is the goal of the practice of meditation on the breath. Without concentration, there is no way to sustain distance from thought for more than a few seconds.

We will introduce a few basic concepts of logical reasoning/strategy through examples from movies, video games, etc. Trying to connect the logic games valuable in academic contexts (ie: SAT logical reasoning, computer science logic excercises) to fun,real-life applications, such as "what would you do if you ruled the seven kingdoms", etc.

In this course, we will consider a few important paradoxes and potential solutions to them. We will spend a majority of our time on The Liar and the Sorites Paradox, and our goal will be to state these paradoxes clearly and to see if we can solve them, or if we are convinced by any of the solutions that philosophers throughout the ages have proposed. In doing so, we will bump into a number of issues philosophical issues concerning logic and language. We will also take a broader view of the topic, asking what characterizes paradox generally, and why we ought to look for solutions to paradoxes at all. If you like logic, language, puzzles, being puzzled, and thinking deeply, then this is the course for you! No background in philosophy or logic is required or assumed.

Think you've heard it all and know everything about The Great Gatsby... think again! Recently a new theory was presented that shocked many Fitzgerald scholars but has a large amount of evidence behind it; Is Fitzgerald's protagonist Black? In this class we will discuss this theory and what it means for the rest of the book


Prerequisites
An interest in English

Involves working with students to undo popular fairytales into their own genres while introducing certain writing techniques.

If everybody already speaks at least one language, what's the point of studying language at all? It turns out that languages have a rich history and fascinating relationships that you might not realize, if you only speak one or two.

In this class, we'll learn just how different languages can be, and how they came to be that way. We'll also touch on some common misconceptions, such as what linguists do, and the difference between a language and a dialect.

We'll be discussing many different languages, but don't worry—you only need to know English!

95% of known animal species have no backbone or spine, and yet these invertebrate animals aren’t nearly as popular or well-known as vertebrates like frogs, fish and humans. In this class, we’ll walk through the unique, almost alien anatomy and physiology of different invertebrate animal groups (did you know octopuses have three hearts and blue blood?) and talk about how invertebrates ranging from cockroaches to coral first evolved. We’ll talk about how research on nematode worms and fruit flies has helped us better understand genetics, development, and disease in our own bodies. And we’ll talk about the importance of invertebrate animals to industry and the economy (from bees that pollinate crops to the “shellfish” that millions eat each day), and how studying invertebrates (including the fossil record of long-dead invertebrates) can help us protect them and the ecosystems they are a part of from of global warming and other environmental change.


Prerequisites
No prereqs other than interest in wildlife, biology, and evolution, and tolerance for lots of pictures of insects and spiders

When scientists need to study things, but don't want to kill a ton of humans, we use model organisms. Many organisms (mice, worms, fish etc.) but Drosophila (Fruit flies), are unambiguously the best. This course is a brief overview of how genetics research works through the wonderful world of fly genetics.


Prerequisites
High School level biology

We will teach a number of basic first aid skills, such as how to perform CPR, how to help someone who is choking, or how to wrap a wound in an emergency situation. Students will get the opportunity to practice skills using our equipment on pretend patients.

It's pretty tough to understand the ancient past from just a few fossils, but some puzzles are tougher than others. This course will explore a handful of the greatest mysteries in paleontology, exploring the mysteries themselves and how they were finally solved. Our main goals will be to understand some of the basic methods of paleontological research, as well as some of the critical thinking skills and creative research methods used to solve these big questions. No background in paleontology or earth sciences necessary!

How do humans learn? What are the different memory systems? How does our environmental input and our neurobiology interact to help us remember facts, skills and events? This class will explore the fundamental neurobiology behind learning, the different types of memory systems (implicit and explicit), major experiments in the field, and how to use this knowledge to better engage with classwork.


Prerequisites
A basic biology course is recommended