My rough plan is for us, each week, to read two Cosmicomics stories, discuss them -- as literature -- and then learn more about the science described in the short prefaces of each story. I don't know now if that's the right amount of material, but we'll learn and adjust as we go.
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Comments About Experiencing Literature
I recommend that you get into our text by jumping right into the first stories. Most of the recent collections of Italo Calvino's work start with long-winded, erudite, jargon-filled descriptions of the author and "what he was doing", at least in the eyes of some literary analyst.
Please skip all this stuff for now, and form your own impressions by reading what Calvino wrote and presented to the world. I believe this is the way he would have wanted you to meet him -- by experiencing his published works.
In general, when reading literature, I skip all forewords (introductions, prefaces, and the like) that are not written by the author. If the author writes some comments-before-the-work, I consider them part of the work; but if not, I wait until I have read the entire work, and then, if I remember, I might (and might not) go back and look over these forewords, to compare my own impressions with those of the commentator.
I usually like my impressions better.
In short, I want to read the literature itself before someone else tries to tell me what (they think) I should find there.
For me, a literary work -- or any work of art -- is an opportunity to make meaning, which does not necessarily mean trying to figure out what the author really meant for me to think. With a long-gone or unknown author, how can I ever know that? I like to let the work speak to me for itself, in the context of my own experience, before I contaminate myself with someone else's views, or with "insider information" that might give my experience a slant that is not my own.
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Before the first class (September 18),
• Please read the following stories in The Complete Cosmicomics:
-- The Distance of the Moon
-- At Daybreak
• After reading The Distance of the Moon, watch these videos:
Two short videos on how tides work:
The following video is more complex than those above, but the explanations are more complete, including the matter of tidal drift -- why the Moon, while closer when when formed, has now drifted out to its current position, about 250,000 miles away. We will watch this one in class.
Crash Course Astronomy is a great series for learning about all aspects of astronomy.
• After reading At Daybreak, watch or read these resources:
-- Wikipedia, Solar System, read the introduction and the sections entitled "Orbits" and "Distances and Scales", especially figures that illustrate relative sizes and distances. The main point here is to give you some sense of the scale of "nearby" astronomical objects.
-- Formation of the Solar System from a cloud of gas and debris
I chose the following video because it gives a broad overview of why and how gas clouds might have shrunk to form larger bodies like solar systems. It does so in the context of the space program OSIRIS-REx, which fetched samples from the asteroid 10195 Bennu, samples that might give even more insight into the details of solar system formation. Click HERE for the latest information about Bennu and what scientists are learning from samples returned to Earth from Bennu.
-- The Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud
More about the lesser-known objects in the Solar System
-- Why are galaxies, solar systems, and planetary rings flat, not spherical?
See you at 9:30, Thursday, 18 September, in Wishcamper 203.
