Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA
Students have a weekly online reading assignment (hosted by SurveyMonkey.com), where they answer questions based on reading their textbook, material covered in previous lectures, opinion questions, and/or asking (anonymous) questions or making (anonymous) comments. Full credit is given for completing the online reading assignment before next week's lecture, regardless if whether their answers are correct/incorrect. Selected results/questions/comments are addressed by the instructor at the start of the following lecture.
The following questions were asked on reading textbook chapters and previewing presentations on the origin of life, a "Here Is Today" timeline, LEGO® washing tips and the extraterrestrial hypothesis.
Describe something you found interesting from the assigned textbook reading or presentation preview, and explain why this was personally interesting for you.
"Oxidation is interesting and confusing because it's erosion but more complicated."
"I love the idea of life, there is no way we are alone in the universe."
"I think the whole chapter was interesting due to the fact that the life on other planets is a huge question that the human race has been curious about for ages. Defining life is another interesting topic due to the fact that extra terrestrials might be considered 'alive' but in a completely different way than the typical human would think."
"How the timeline of all of time from the birth of the solar system to the the start of humans seems to make you feel so short-lived. Almost as if what you are or what you have done doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of time."
"How from now on, every consecutive lifeform on Earth should evolve faster and faster."
"The Drake equation was interesting--it is a reasonable explanation in a quantifiable way that explains the chances of other intelligent life may exist in the universe."
"Something that I found interesting was the debate and idea of their being other life in the universe...we are not alone."
"Watching the timeline video and how it moved back through time to give perspective on how long a period humans have been around compared to the solar system. "
"How little the line is for humans on the Here is Today timeline."
Describe something you found confusing from the assigned textbook reading or presentation preview, and explain why this was personally confusing for you.
"I found nothing confusing, life exists out there."
"The definition of life, due to the fact that it is always heavily discussed."
"What kind of civilizations we are looking for with the Drake equation."
"DNA because I haven't studied biology in several years."
"The Drake equation confused me. Exactly what is it and what can it tell us."
"The theory of chemical evolution to be confusing. I find it hard to believe that biogenesis could begin from inorganic matter. If this could happen on Earth under the circumstance that Miller and Urey produced in the lab, then it's more likely that life could have evolved in similar situation in other places in the universe."
"Nothing was confusing."
"Something I found confusing was the process of evolution and the lengths of time for significant events to occur on Earth. "
"The origin of life, because it's hard for me to comprehend the vast size and how everything around us just started with a few molecules, it's amazing."
"The Drake equation is really confusing and can't wrap my head around the whole equation."
Briefly describe a difference between life and non-living things.
"living things require a constant intake of energy and cease to be alive when it stops."
"Amino acids are the basis of all life. Non-living things don't have amino acids."
"The biggest difference would be that living things are able to make copies of themselves."
"Assuming that life is only capable through the presence of carbon, that would be the difference between living and non living things. Carbon needs to be present to bind together and form the lifeforms."
"Life is the ability to manipulate your environment and create more generations of yourself to manipulate their environments. Non-living things are just there and can not manipulate anything."
"Life is different from non-living things because in order to be living you must contribute to the environment such as creating, destroying and also being able to adapt to the changes in the environment"
"Life can reproduce itself and it contains DNA."
"Living things contain cells, non-living things are acellular."
"Something is said to be alive if it extracts energy from its environment, maintains itself, and can change its environment in order to survive and reproduce new life. Inamimate matter, in contrast, can not do any of these functions that a living thing can."
"Living things can grow and reproduce, non-living things can't do anything."
"Life is something that is alive and its life can come to an end at any point. Non-living things don't, and are dead basically. "
"Living things interact with their environment. they also manipulate it."
"Living things are: things that can manipulate the environment and produce another generation where non-living things are objects that do not grow, reproduce or seem to breathe."
"A living thing should manipulate its environment."
"Living things can grow and use other molecules to sustain there ability to grow and non-living things don't need to grow and just stay still with non moving molecules."
"Non-living things are chemically made and life is complex molecules."
(Only correct responses shown.)
Time after the formation of Earth for single-cell life to arise: a medium amount of time (about 1 billion years) [54%]
Time for the first types of simple single-cell life to evolve into fishlike creatures: the longest amount of time (about 3 billion years) [84%]
Time for fishlike creatures to evolve into more complex land-based animals today: the shortest amount of time (about 0.5 billion years) [58%]
How important is it to you to know whether or not there may be life elsewhere other than on Earth?
Unimportant. * [1] Of little importance. *** [3] Somewhat important. ***** [5] Important. ***** [5] Very important. *****[5]
Briefly explain your answer regarding the importance of knowing whether there may be life elsewhere other than on Earth.
"It would be so far in the past anyway that it may not matter."
"We need to know if we are alone in this universe. We are incredibly lucky if we are."
"It's not very important to me because, unless we can visit them, it won't change much."
"They are many questions/issues that have arisen in our society that do not have permanent solutions. Such as perfect renewable energy and similar scenarios. Perhaps meeting with another intelligent life form could offer other solutions? Also I just think it's something that would be really cool to see, assuming it isn't like the movie Independence Day."
"I think it is somewhat important to know if there is other life because we have been wondering for so long, just imaginening the possibility of sharing something different not just in culture but in worldly way."
"I believe it's very important to know what other type of lifeforms are in the universe mainly because that would be an unbelievable discovery and we could possibly learn more about them and how they are able to survive."
"It is not something I think about a lot, but it would be very interesting to know."
"There is much life on this planet now that life somewhere else should not surprise me. The vastness of the universe will no doubt contain more life in many forms that I have no doubt about it. It will only be a matter of time."
"I think that would be one of the coolest things ever to find out if we are alone or not."
"I think about it a lot. To know whether or not there is life somewhere other than Earth would be the most fascinating thing we have ever learned in history. As of now, whatever is on Earth is all we know that lives. I, myself would be extremely ecstatic to learn more about potential life on another planet."
"I believe that our universe is so ridiculously ginormous that I want to believe there are other species and I want to know so badly how similar they are to us and how they are surviving. Also how their lifestyle is in comparison to our world today."
"It's not something that keeps me up at night, but it's fascinating to think about."
"It is somewhat important to know whether or not there is life elsewhere other than Earth since then it will add spice to our lives and it means that there is more to life then just Earth."
"It's important for the continuation of the human race and for science."
"Due to the distance there could be life right now on another planet, but we will more than likely not find out in my lifetime."
"Id like to know if there were other organisms out there just like us because we would be able to befriend them and learn things about how the universe works that maybe we don't know ourselves If something happened way longer down the road then I could see it being important."
Which type of star would be least likely to have a planet that could support life?
Massive. ********* [9] Medium-mass. *** [3] Low-mass (red dwarf). ****** [6] (Unsure/guessing/lost/help!) * [1]
Briefly explain your answer to the previous question (type of star least likely to have a planet that could support life).
"Massive stars generate too much heat for the Goldilocks zone to be available."
"Complex life takes a long time to form and massive stars don't live very long."
"I believe a low-mass red dwarf would be incapable of hosting life on a nearby planet due to the lower temperatures and how hard it would be for complex life forms to rise from that."
Describe what the Drake equation is used for.
"It is used to estimate the total amount of communicative civilizations in our galaxy."
"It's used to narrow the search for life in the universe."
"It is used for calculating the chance of life elsewhere."
"I am confused about this."
"So lost."
Implausible. *** [3] Not very plausible. ********** [10] Somewhat plausible. ***** [5] Very plausible. * [1] (Unsure/guessing/lost/help!) [0]
Ask the instructor an anonymous question, or make a comment. Selected questions/comments may be discussed in class.
"I watched a documentary about 10 years ago about these three British guys that wen around and made the crop circles that we saw."
"Do you think that the Chibolton message is a hoax or a message of some kind?"
"Because the universe is infinite, isn't it guaranteed that there should be life on other planets? Do you think there is life somewhere else in this universe?"
"What do you think is the likelihood of intelligent life evolving in the universe? Do you think intelligent life is rare or abundant?"
"Do you think there are aliens?"
"How do you feel about the movie Interstellar?"
"Do you think the Chilbolton message is a reply from extraterrestrials?"
"Dang, this will be the last class."
No comments:
Post a Comment