Macaulay Honors College Seminar 3: Science and Technology in New York City
Brooklyn College, Tuesday 8 – 10:45AM at Ingersoll 3424
Prof. Micha Tomkiewicz
Email: michatom@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Instructional Technology Fellow: Laurel Mei Turbin
Email: laurelmei@gmail.com
Office Hours: Thursday 12:30 – 3:30 PM at Boylan 2231
The course will emphasize the interconnection of scales between the global and local environmental impacts with focus on New York City. The science learning objectives include skill development in quantitative reasoning in areas such as graphing, unit conversion, exponential and logarithmic functions, elementary statistics, etc..Research learning objectives include posing researchable questions, literature search, hypothesis building, data collection, data analysis and publication skills.
Scientific concepts will be introduced that will enable students to analyze current environmental information from first principles. Perceived impact of environmental stresses requires tools for prediction of impacts. The recommended book will be used as a “reading material” in the beginning of the course. It will be used as background that illustrates global environmental impact through investigation of the scientific, social, economic and political issues that focus on climate change. The class-work will focus on the science of climate change, the methodologies to predict future impact and the correlations between economic development and environmental impact. The correlation will be formulated in terms of the IPAT equation that relates environmental impact (I) to population growth (P), growth in affluence as measured by GDP/Capita (A) and technological terms (T) that correlate between the GDP and the environmental impact. Future projections all indicate that unless major changes are introduced in the development path of emerging economies, global economic development will result in unsustainable environmental consequences.
