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Subject: Energy course in spring semester - P401
From: "Lee Riedinger" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, December 9, 2010 6:10 pm
To: "Mike Frazier" <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: "Masood Parang" <[log in to unmask]>
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To: Department heads in Science and Engineering
I ask your help in distributing this e mail and attached syllabus to your
upper-level undergraduate majors and first or second year graduate students
concerning a course I am teaching in the spring semester - Physics 401,
Future Energy Technologies. This will be a three-credit course delving
into the energy technologies that are available to us in the near and long
term. Our country and our world clearly face major challenges in the
supply and use of energy and the environmental impacts of the various
energy choices, including climate change. There are solutions available
to us now and the evolution of technology will lead to new options in
coming decades. The intent of the course is to discuss the technical
basis for each, along withissues of economics, resulting impacts on the
environment, and potential for adaptation in our society.
I taught my first energy course in spring of 2009 in Physics 401 and had a
wonderful class of 22 students from the Physics Department, Chemistry, and
several Engineering departments. Then I developed an energy survey course
for the Haslam Scholars, HSP 288, taught in fall of 2009 and 2010. I will
likely teach next academic year the new core course for the Energy Science
and Engineering PhD program, ESE 511 and 512. I plan to teach P401 this
time as a course more or less halfway between the survey HSP 288 course and
the rather rigorous ESE 511 and 512 intended for next year. P401 in the
spring semester will include the survey aspect, discussing at a high level
each of the energy technologies available now or in the future. But, it
will also have a component of working occasional problems to illustrate
some of the details of the technology, to give the students a deeper
appreciation for comparative efficiencies, operating principles, feedstock
supply, etc.
Thanks for your help in letting students know about this course. Please
ask them to let me know of their interest in taking this course.
Lee
--
Lee L. Riedinger
Professor of Physics
Director, Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education
The University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-1200
865-719-4898
Fax: 865-974-7843
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