BIG101

to be migrated

This is my personal page for BIG101, a year-long inter-disciplinary course (Big Idea course) named ‘Energy -- from fire to the future’ that I am co-teaching with Prof. Adonis Yatchew (Department of Economics) and Prof. Ben Akrigg (Department of Classics).  

For students taking this course, please log on to the Blackboard portal for all announcements, assignments, readings and lecture notes. 

For others, I have posted some of my lecture notes here. I do not claim any copy-right for these notes and you may use all or part of them, though some of the figures that I downloaded from internet may have individual copy-rights.

Lectures: Tuesday & Wednesday, 3-4PM, SS2117 

Old Schedules from year 2013; Revised version/slides to come.

Week I:  Course Prelim, What is energy, Foils, Carbon (Yatchew, Wu)

Week II: Origin of our energy endowment (Wu), 

Week III: Energy Qua History (Yatchew)

Week IV: Burning fossil fuels (Wu), 

Week V: Economic Principles in Energy (Yatchew)

Week VI: Global Warming (Wu),   earth in deep history

                 Toronto Temperature (1937-2012)

Week VII: Global Warming (Wu), correlation & causation

Week VIII: Economics

Week IX: History Overview (Akrigg)

Week X: Economics (Yatchew)

Week XI: History: dating (Akrigg)

Week XII: Global warming (Wu), impacts

Week XIII: mid-term (mid-term review)

The Spring term 2014

Week I: Energy in Canada (Yatchew)

Week II: Nuclear Energy (Wu), Nuclear Energy in Canada (Yatchew,Akrigg)

Week III:  Energy policy (Yatchew)

Week IV: Canadian Energy Policy (Yatchew)

Week V: Energy security through history (Akrigg)

Week VI: Energy security in Ancient Greece (Akrigg)

Week VII: reading week

Week VIII: Energy and world politics: the 20th century (Yatchew)

Week IX: Energy and politics in the 20th century (Yatchew, Akrigg)

Week X: Renewables (Wu)

Week XI: Conservation (Wu)

Week XII:

Week XIII: