Physics 298B, Spring 2022

Important issues in society are often, or perhaps even always, reflected in the culture via movies. We will present 1 movie per week, hosted by someone knowledgable who will discuss the context of the movie. Each host will lead a discussion, give a lecture, etc, before or after the movie, as they see fit. There are no prerequisites other than wanting to understand how the world might have gotten into the curious state it seems to be in now!

The course is open to all, room permitting. For those who have signed up for the 1 credit, the course will be pass/fail. There will be no weekly assignments other than showing up. At the end of the semester, each student will submit a short paper (5-10 pages, more or less) that comments on at least 1 movie that they saw, what they learned from it, why it's important, or perhaps why it's no longer important.

Zoom

We will probably be using zoom to record the lecturs for posterity, etc. You should probably not, however, use zoom for the movie, those don't play well on zoom.

Zoom coordinates: https://umd.zoom.us/my/drewbaden (passcode=physics)

Schedule

Below is a preliminary schedule, subject to change as the hosts schedules require. The class will start at 6pm on Tuesdays.

Copyright Protection of Course Materials

Unless indicated otherwise, any lecture handouts and the lectures themselves (including audio and video recordings) are copyrighted by me and may not be distributed or reproduced for anything other than your personal use without my written permission. (The University makes me say this!)