Anthony Der’s Three Semester Review

I believe that the most I’ve taken away from the Earth, Life, and Time program is a more awareness of science in everyday life, and also how it is rooted within our thoughts as well without us consciously thinking about it. The study of rocks on the geological timescale was one of the unique ways to bring out this idea. The first field trip to Sideling Hill was definitely a unique experience. Being able to see that the cut in the mountain had a dual purpose, one for transportation, and the other for studying the different layers of rocks, makes a person think what they’re standing on and acknowledge how old it really is. It makes people think about what a mountain is really made out of, instead of a big peak in the ground. Also in the first semester, reading Sagan’s book helped acknowledge what is real science and what wasn’t. The idea of ghosts, aliens, and other myths were put to rest through scientific reasoning, which made the book so interesting as well as expanded the awareness of the common scams (such as magnets used for therapy) that exist all around us. In the second semester, the focus turned onto the evolution of humans and how we aren’t really as diverse as we think we are. We had discussions in class about how there is a trend as you go east-west across Europe/Asia, and you will see no distinct change, but slightly different features as you go along. In other words, there isn’t a line you cross and then suddenly everyone is either white or Asian. This helped us grasp the concept that humans really haven’t been around for that long. The activity that reinforced this idea was the family history project. Not only did that project help us study our family history, it made us realize that 1000 years ago people moved around a lot. And since people moved around a lot, even people from completely different cultural backgrounds were in the same area back then. This was confirmed by doing this in class, with a giant map and tacks. There was a lot of overlapping, and crowding in the same three or four areas. That semester’s field trip, to the Smithsonian, allowed us to study dinosaurs and common ancestors of the animals today. One example was the giant sea turtle, which is the common ancestor of many of the turtles we have today. The large time scale that was also there showed how long dinosaurs were around, and makes the human time scale look like a simple dot on the vast amount of time. This semester, we explored the future. The future of humans, and the close calls we’ve had in the past were very intriguing but scary at the same time. Our development of how we got to the point we’re at now (using petroleum for transportation) and how we don’t have unlimited resources made us more aware of future problems we are going to have because there is no solution to running out of petroleum. This idea is kind of scary, since it will be our generation to deal with these sorts of problems. The field trip this year tied in with my genetics class and general chemistry class. My genetics class also stated how similar humans are, and how the human genome project was done and how we’re so similar to every other animal on this planet genetically. My general chemistry class pointed out what happens if you mix chemicals wrong, and how atomic materials are created. Working with Sheikha Tschand improved my Scholars experience, since we went to the Smithsonian on our own in the second semester. She was able to point out things that I missed, and I was able to point out things that she missed (like dinosaurs were actually alive). Scholars will stick with me for the rest of my undergrad years, where I’ll realize what is scientifically sound, and what sounds like absolute rubbish. It also helps me keep an open mind about different cultures, because even though someone is a different culture, they’re only like, .0000001% different then me or something like that.
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