CHEM 125a - Lecture 4 - Coping with Smallness and Scanning Probe Microscopy

This lecture asks whether it is possible to confirm the reality of bonds by seeing or feeling them. It first describes the work of "clairvoyant" charlatans from the beginning of the twentieth century, who claimed to "see" details of atomic and molecular structure, in order to discuss proper bases for scientific belief. It then shows that the molecular scale is not inconceivably small, and that Newton and Franklin performed simple experiments that measure such small distances.

CHEM 125a - Lecture 3 - Double Minima, Earnshaw's Theorem and Plum-Puddings

Continuing the discussion of Lewis structures and chemical forces from the previous lecture, Professor McBride introduces the double-well potential of the ozone molecule and its structural equilibrium. The inability for inverse-square force laws to account for stable arrangements of charged particles is prescribed by Earnshaw's Theorem, which may be visualized by means of lines of force. J.J. Thomson circumvented Earnshaw's prohibition on structure by postulating a "plum-pudding" atom.

CHEM 125a - Lecture 2 - Force Laws, Lewis Structures and Resonance

Professor McBride begins by following Newton's admonition to search for the force law that describes chemical bonding. Neither direct (Hooke's Law) nor inverse (Coulomb, Gravity) dependence on distance will do - a composite like the Morse potential is needed. G. N. Lewis devised a "cubic-octet" theory based on the newly discovered electron, and developed it into a shared pair model to explain bonding.

CHEM 125a - Lecture 1 - How Do You Know?

Professor McBride outlines the course with its goals and requirements, including the required laboratory course. To the course's prime question "How do you know" he proposes two unacceptable answers (divine and human authority), and two acceptable answers (experiment and logic). He illustrates the fruitfulness of experiment and logic using the rise of science in the seventeenth century. London's Royal Society and the "crucial" experiment on light by Isaac Newton provide examples.

HSAR 252 - Lecture 16 - The Roman Way of Life and Death at Ostia, the Port of Rome

Professor Kleiner focuses on Ostia, the port of Rome, characterized by its multi-storied residential buildings and its widespread use of brick-faced concrete. She begins with the city's public face--the Forum, Capitolium, Theater, and Piazzale delle Corporazioni. The Piazzale, set behind the Theater, was the location of various shipping companies with black-and-white mosaics advertising their business. Professor Kleiner examines the Baths of Neptune and the Insula of Diana, a brick apartment building with four floors that housed a number of Ostia's working families.

HSAR 252 - Lecture 15 - Rome and a Villa: Hadrian's Pantheon and Tivoli Retreat

Professor Kleiner features the architecture built in and around Rome during the reign of Hadrian. The lecture begins with the Temple of Venus and Roma, a Greek-style temple constructed near the Colosseum in Rome, which may have been designed by Hadrian himself. Professor Kleiner then turns to the Pantheon, a temple dedicated to all the gods that combines the marble porch and pediment of a traditional Greco-Roman temple with a vast concrete cylindrical drum, hemispherical dome, and central oculus.

HSAR 252 - Lecture 11 - Notorious Nero and His Amazing Architectural Legacy

Professor Kleiner features the architecture of Augustus' successors, the Julio-Claudian emperors, whose dynasty lasted half a century (A.D. 14-68). She first presents Tiberius' magnificent Villa Jovis on the Island of Capri and an underground basilica in Rome used by members of a secret Neo-Pythagorean cult. She then turns to the eccentric architecture of Claudius, a return to masonry building techniques and a unique combination of finished and unfinished, or rusticated, elements.

ENGL 220 - Lecture 14 - Paradise Lost, Book IV

This lecture examines Book Four's depiction of Adam and Eve and the sexual politics of life in Eden. Seventeenth-century political theory, particularly the work of Thomas Hobbes, is considered with a focus on then-contemporary theories of the structure and government of the first human societies. Critical perspectives on what have variously been proposed as sexist and feminist elements of Milton's Eden are surveyed. Milton's struggle with the problem of depicting an unfallen world to a fallen audience is closely detailed.

HSAR 252 - Lecture 1 - Introduction to Roman Architecture

Professor Kleiner introduces the wide variety of Roman buildings covered in the course and links them with the theme of Roman urbanism. The lecture ranges from early Roman stone construction to such masterpieces of Roman concrete architecture as the Colosseum and Pantheon. Traveling from Rome and Pompeii across the vast Roman Empire, Professor Kleiner stops in such locales as North Africa and Jordan to explore the plans of cities and their individual edifices: temples, basilicas, theaters, amphitheaters, bath complexes, and tombs.

HIST 276 - Lecture 4 - A Nation? Peasants, Language, and French Identity

The problematic question of when people in France began to consider themselves part of a French nation, with a specifically French national identity, has often been explained in terms of the modernizing progress of the French language at the expense of regional dialects. In fact, the development of French identity in rural France can be seen to have taken place alongside a continued tradition of local cultural practices, particularly in the form of patois.