HON-H 241 – The Self-Organizing Planet

Develop the concepts and techniques needed to understand the origins in the laws of physics and chemistry regarding the mechanisms by which our planet has become organized on many scales in space and time. Self-organization is the spontaneous emergence of patterns in the distribution of matter, energy, and other variables without these patterns having been imposed by an external source. These phenomena are so pervasive in the biological, chemical, geological, socioeconomic, and other systems that one is led to the question as to the workings of higher universal principles. This will be explored via a delineation of general principles and analyses of many examples. Students will research a particular phenomenon of interest to them and develop an understanding of the processes and their coupling that underlie the associated self-organization.