Big Course: Year 1

What is water made of?

We’ll go back in time to see where our ideas of “elements” and “atoms” come from... and the single, dangerous experiment that proved that they were way weirder than anyone had thought. (Spoilers: elements, atoms, molecules, Democritus, and Henry Cavendish.)

Why is water wet?

To understand that, we’ll push beyond the usual ball-and-stick model of molecules and understand water on the subatomic level! (Spoilers: the nucleus, electron orbits, electromagnetic charge, hydrogen bonds, Ant-Man, and Niels Bohr.)

Where do puddles go?

Sure, the answer seems obvious — they “evaporate”! But why do some things evaporate, but not others? You’ll hear the story of the huge scientific fight over what “heat” is, and shrink down to the nanoscale to understand what’s really going on in a puddle. (Spoilers: heat, phase changes, bond strength.)

Why do living things love water?

Water seems necessary for life — why? And why don’t oil and water mix? (Spoilers: solvents, unipolar vs. bipolar molecules.)

Why are snowflakes symmetrical?

Where does beauty and order come from? You’ll understand what snow is, see crystals growing up close, and understand something profound about the Universe. (Spoilers: crystallization, sublimation, deposition, entropy.)

Where does “weight” go?

You eat about a pound of food a day, and you’re at least a few thousand days old. So why aren’t you the size of a hippo? Do you poop out the food... or something much stranger? What are you made of, anyway? What is going on in this world of ours?! (Spoilers: conservation of matter, the carbon cycle, and Antonie Lavoisier.)

Why’s there a dent in your lung?

How do your lungs actually work... and why do you have them in the first place? What does it mean to “breathe”, and why does every animal seem to do it? (Spoilers: your respiratory system, cellular respiration, cells, blood, and William Harvey.)

Why do we have lungs?

Bees don’t have lungs. Fish don’t, either. A while ago, you didn’t have lungs! How do they breathe — and what do all these methods have in common? (Spoilers: solubility, gills, diffusion, and our old friend entropy.)

What is a lung, really?

Body parts always come from somewhere! What was the first animal with lungs? What was a lung before it was a lung? This lesson, you’ll climb far up your family tree. (Spoilers: vertebrate evolution, exaptation, Charles Darwin and his frenemy St. George Jackson Mivart.)

How do you protect your gooey lungs?

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest, and opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.”
–Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, volume 9

(Spoilers: your cilia, your bones, and your whole danged immune system.)

Why do clouds float?

It’s anti-gravity, right? They’re filled with tiny anti-gravity boots? (Spoilers: density, air pressure, condensation, and a certain letter written by Evangelista Torricelli that changed the world.)

Where do clouds come from?

A cloud is less a thing than a process... one that happens too slowly for our squirrel brains to pay attention to. But once you see a cloud actually being born, you’ll never look at the sky the same way. (Spoilers: convection, rain shadows.)

How long would it take to walk up to a cloud?

Let’s get a sense of scale — how big are these things? How high up are they? What are we talking about when we talk about the “sky”? (Spoilers: types of clouds, troposphere, and Luke Howard.)

What makes it rain, hail, or snow?

Why are some clouds “rain clouds”, and others aren’t? Does it ever rain without a cloud? What’s up with hail? And why does hair spray always feel cold? (Spoilers: dew point, condensation nuclei, the conservation of energy, latent heat, precipitation.)

What makes lightning?

Remember, all these lessons are building on each other — and here we’re going to follow an implication of something we mentioned in “Water”... even if it kills us. (Spoilers: plasma, Thor Odinson, ions, electromagnetism, electron avalanches.)

Why do we wash our hands?

Turns out the right answer isn’t always the most obvious one... or even the second most obvious one! (Spoilers: traditional medicine, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, and Ignaz Semmelweis.)

How scared should we be of bacteriums?

Meet one of our oldest enemies... and how we stumbled into the middle of an ancient war, and chose a side. (Spoilers: antibiotics, antibiotic resistance, and Alexander Fleming.)

How could you stop food from rotting... if you were stuck back in time?

Turns out Stone-Age humans figured out something pretty darned clever about bacteriums... and it may have transformed society. (Spoilers: zymurgy, Lactobacillus.)

What’s it like to be a bacterium?

Sure, they’re “alive” — but if you were turned into a bacterium, would it be like being a rock? Are bacteriums conscious? What is “consciousness” anyway? (Spoilers: the “easy” problems of consciousness, the hard problem of consciousness.)

Why do people get cancer?

If you know anything about cancer, you might be surprised to see us ask this question in “Bacteria”. Don’t worry. We have something interesting up our sleeves. (Spoilers: the evolution of life, mitochondria, endosymbiosis, and Lynn Margulis.)

How do snails see the world?

Snails don’t just move slowly; they experience the world in a way that’s fundamentally different from us. Dive deep into their unique perspective, and begin to explore how eyes – even snail eyes – have evolved to capture the beauty of the world. (Spoilers: mollusk eye evolution, sensory perception, and Aristotle.)

Why do snails spiral?

A snail's shell isn't just its protection; it's a testament to the beauty of mathematics in nature. Discover the enigma of spirals, what they mean in the life of a snail, and how they connect us to the broader universe. (Spoilers: Fibonacci sequence, growth patterns, and mathematical beauty in nature.)

What’s with the goo?

Mucus is more than just slimy stuff. Delve into the slippery world of snail slime to unravel its mysteries, its functions, and the reasons it's crucial for a snail's existence – and not just for sliding around. (Spoilers: Mucus properties, locomotion, predator defense, and hydration.)

What kind of animal is a snail?

From the tiniest to the giants, snails have relatives spread all across the animal kingdom. Trace back the lineage of these shelled creatures and discover their deep-rooted connections in the tree of life. (Spoilers: phylogeny, gastropod evolution, Linnaean taxonomy, and Carolus Linnaeus.)

When did snails rule the Earth?

Journey back in time to periods when mollusks, the larger family to which snails belong, dominated vast ecosystems. Relive the ancient world and learn about the incredible diversity, dominance, and decline of snails and their kin. (Spoilers: prehistoric mollusks, extinction events, marine ecosystems, and paleobiology.)