Hi, everyone.

I wanted to let you know that I've posted the slides from the "Light and Electromagnetism" lecture on the SII web site:
http://www.scienceintegration.org/Concepts/lightslides.pdf

As you review the material, I encourage you to think about why it matters that we know about light, aside from the technological benefits. How does, or could, the knowledge affect how you view the world?

For me, knowing about the wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum reminds me that there is much more to the universe than what we can directly detect.

This gives me a sense of the wonder and mystery of nature. On the other hand, knowing enough about light to understand things like why the sky is blue, why the sun looks red when it's close to the horizon, and why rainbows exist make me feel more "at home" in the universe in some sense. It reminds me that we can find explanations of observations through science and that the understanding we gain can lead to greater appreciation of the phenomena. As I think about the concepts, new questions arise: Why do some patterns of light strike us as beautiful while others do not? How would the world appear to us if our eyes could detect a different range of the electromagnetic spectrum?

Knowing how the science of light relates to the technology we use helps me feel connected to bigger processes and principles in nature when I use the technology. It's amazing for me to think that my bedside lamp shares the ability to produce visible light with the stars we see in the sky or that the EM waves used to cook my microwave dinner are similar to the radiation we can detect from the Big Bang or that radio waves like those that broadcast the music I listen to could be used to communicate with an extraterrestrial civilization.

Todd expressed some good ideas about our experiences with light in Chapter 3 of his book "An Ordinary World": http://www.scienceintegration.org/books.htm

Any thoughts from anyone else?
Amanda