Washoe County Library System

Dr. Carroll explains the subject of dark matter and dark energy in 24 lectures. He explains why scientists believe we live in a smooth, expanding universe that originated in a hot, dense state called the Big Bang. He describes the features of the infant universe that led to the large-scale structure we observe today. He takes you through the standard model of particle physics and shows how it provides the framework for understanding the interaction...

Biology and Human Behavior: The Neurological Origins of Individuality, is an interdisciplinary approach to the fascinating subject of behavioral biology, a field that explores interactions among the brain, mind, body, and environment that have a surprising influence on how we behave. In 24 lectures, you will investigate how the human brain is sculpted by evolution, constrained or freed by genes, shaped by early experience, modulated by hormones,...

These lectures reveal how mathematics has changed the way people look at the world. We study how the model of certainty in Euclid's revolutionary Elements influenced philosophers for centuries, and how the invention of non-Euclidiean geometry further influenced philosophy and changed modern views of the world. As well. we consider how the newer disciplines of probability and statistics gave scientists ways of dealing--with precision--with events that...

These 36 half-hour lectures are your initiation into the geological world that lies just outside your door. "The Nature of Earth: An Introduction to Geology" introduces you to physical geology, the study of Earth's minerals, rocks, soils, and the processes that operate on them through time.

A 24-lecture course on the evolution of humans.

Twelve lectures by Edward J. Larson on human evolution.

Presents lectures (each 30 minutes in length) by Michael Starbird, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin. Presents a collection of topics that reveal the rich, wondrous structure of what we see around us. Patterns in nature are the source of our geometrical understanding of the world. Abstracting those patterns leads to concepts from classical geometry. Extensions of those and other ideas of form have created a landscape...