The PTI Seminars 2005
Group A Seminars
(Preference given to teachers of
specific grades or courses)
Against Our Will: Forced Migration & Immigration
Seminar led by Timothy Kelly
Chatham College
This seminar will explore the broad parameters of migration and immigration in American history, but then focus more specifically on those forces that led people to move against their will. In particular, the course will examine wars and the migrations that they caused (refugees, those who moved to escape military service, etc.), slavery, Indian removal, migration to escape religious persecution, and other phenomena. in addition, we will examine the ways that those forced to move have attempted to survive such moves, both physically and culturally. This focus will include examinations of such things as religious practices and family networks.
Preference given to teachers of United States History
Mathematics in Nature
Seminar
led by Richard Holman
Carnegie Mellon University
Most of the mathematics we use comes from the Natural world and have been axiomatized and codified into a more formal structure. In this seminar we will look at interesting mathematics in the context of problems in nature. Examples of these are: Why rivers bend as they do, how rainbows are formed, and flight amongst others.
Preference given to teachers of middle school math and above.
Reading Richard Greene's "The Elegant Universe"
Seminar led by Richard Holman,
Carnegie Mellon University
We are at a pivotal time in our understanding of the physical universe. With the advent of new probes of outer space as well as accelerators that will increase our understanding of the subatomic world, we can expect our views of the universe to change even more.
Two books, Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe" and Stephen Hawking's "The Universe in a Nutshell," attempt to describe complementary ways of understanding how the physics of the (almost) unimaginably small can affect the large scale structure of the Universe. They both tackle the issue of the Theory of Everything and how wildly differing concepts such as gravity and quantum mechanics might be unified. They are written for the layperson, but still require a little help to be completely understood. In this seminar we will read these books and the lecture I give will relate to the physical concepts being discussed.