The Berkeley Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small-seminar setting. Berkeley Seminars are offered in all campus departments, and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester.

This seminar will examine the characteristics and implications of "big science" experiments, i.e. those with costs at the level of several hundred million dollars or more. How and why have experiments grown to this scale? How do such experiments get born? How do they get funded? How are they managed? What are the effects (positive and negative) on the sociology of science at this scale? Some of the big experiments discussed in class are: James Webb Space Telescope-NASA, Laser Interferometric Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), Human Genome Project, etc. Prerequisites: Students with some scientific background, either in the mathematical and physical sciences, the biological sciences, or in engineering. Students should have an interest in some of the larger societal aspects of science.

Requisites

• Students with 1-2 Terms in Attendance

Repeat Rules