'The riddle of light': a seminar course for scientists and humanists

摘要

Recently a new program of 'First Year Seminar Courses' was initiated int he Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Toronto to introduce in-coming undergraduates to the excitement of university scholarship. These are full-year elective courses, and in each course students work closely with a faculty member in groups of no more than 20 students. I shall review my experiences of these past three years in organizing a course on light, optics, and photonics. The primary aim was to use the rich story of light to bring together students of a variety of intellectual interests, in the hope of demonstrating the valuable knowledge that the cultures of the humanists and scientists can bring to an understanding of the modern world. As we are all aware, the story of light is so all-embracing that this course included not only the science of light and optics, with lasers and photonics, but light in the open air, astronomy, religion, literature, art, architecture, film, stage, health and medicine, with several of the topics discussed by guest speakers. After a brief review of the story of light from its earliest beginnings, an outline of the course will be given along with the many contributions by the students and evaluation of their efforts.