The study of science at The Putney School revives, instills and encourages curiosity about the natural world by equipping students with the habits of mind needed to ask and answer questions using scientific method. Courses introduce fundamental biological, chemical, and physical principles through active inquiry, experimentation, direct instruction and exercises in problem solving. A student who chooses four years of science at The Putney School will normally take biology and chemistry, followed by physics or a series of half-credit electives in the junior or senior year. Advanced tutorials in the sciences are available. Upon graduation, students have understanding of essential methods and content sufficient for lifelong learning, responsible citizenship, and for further study of science at the university level, all with curiosity intact.
Science Courses
Biology (full credit)
This is a freshman and sophomore level course. Through the lens of evolution, students will study the characteristics of living systems: biochemistry, molecular interactions at the cellular level, the structure and functions of cells, tissues and organs within organisms, inheritance and mutation, and interactions between animals, plants, and the environment. The “micro” and “macro” trimesters may be taken in either sequence.
The courses’ lab component emphasizes learning by experimentation both inside the classroom and outside in the local environment, making use of The Putney School farm, woods, and fields. Students will learn how to ask a good scientific question, gather and analyze data, and present their findings in a clear, concise report. Other aspects of the course include learning to use a textbook, scientific texts, journals, researching authoritative sources, discerning scientific claims form pseudo-scientific ones, and making in-class presentations.
Chemistry (full credit)
Chemistry is the study of the composition and properties of substances and the changes they undergo. We begin our study with an examination of atomic theory, electronic structure, chemical bonding, and the periodic table. We then expand our study to aqueous systems, reaction types, and electrochemistry. Laboratory work is inquiry based and is an integral part of the course where students engage in the scientific method, work cooperatively, and hone writing skills. The course will emphasize analysis, observation and critical thinking about these topics using solid scientific evidence to support or refute a viewpoint. By the end of the course, the student will have a sound understanding of chemical principles.
Physics (full credit)
Students are challenged to look at familiar phenomena through the eyes of an inquiring experimental scientist. Problem-solving skills are developed as increasingly complex interactions give way to formal analysis. We begin by studying kinematics, Newton’s Laws of Motion, energy, rotational motion, and planetary systems. The second part of the course investigates electricity and magnetism, optics, and wave phenomena in general with particular attention to light, color and sound. The course ends with a survey of topics in modern physics. While this class is best taken in conjunction with Precalculus or Calculus, two years of Algebra is a prerequisite.
Science Electives
Anatomy and Physiology (half credit)
This advanced biology course approaches anatomy and physiology from a developmental and evolutionary perspective. Students will examine the comparative anatomy of a variety of different vertebrates with emphasis on mammalian systems. The class is structured around student-led discussions, some lectures, and a strong lab component. While some memorization is necessary for any course in anatomy and physiology, this course will focus on how systems work, with an eye toward applying the understanding of students’ every day experience of their own bodies. Every effort will be made to use animals that have not been sacrificed for dissection (i.e., stillborn farm animals, roadkills, etc.). Computer dissection programs will also be used. Prerequisites: Biology and Chemistry or permission of the instructor.
Design/Build (full credit)
(Pending funding) The Putney School does not have enough housing for its faculty members. The goal of this course is to design and build a new faculty house. This raises many questions. How will we gather design input from future inhabitants? Where will it be sited? How will we make choices about the design? How will we select materials? What form will energy inputs take? How much will it cost to build? How much money do we have? How will we resolve the answers to the previous two questions? The course will emphasize collaborative decision making. Field research and interviews will play an important role. We will review the process of design input used in our recent building projects and arrive at a plan for this more modest structure. We will try to reach consensus on major decisions and will use analytical tools where appropriate. How do you size a floor joist? How much insulation is enough? What are the trade-offs when picking a roofing material? The list goes on and on. Analytical techniques from physics, mathematics and economics will be taught and in constant use. But you can’t build a house by thinking it into existence. Learning to use tools is at the heart of this course. By the end of it, you will be proficient with many of the tools and techniques in the building trades. You may begin the course with a fear of hand and power tools, but you will not end the course that way. You will receive careful, patient instruction in their safe use to produce accurate results efficiently.You will learn to apply mathematical and scientific skills to achieve very concrete and visible results and learn that these skills can be seen as tools in their own right. The time commitment necessary for this undertaking does not fit in the regular academic schedule. The design portion of the class will run during the fall trimester during the academic day. In the spring, we will break ground during afternoon activities. We will run one or two crews in the afternoons. Finally, we will spend four weeks during the summer working on the house. Our goal will be to design and build an energy-efficient faculty house using techniques that will maximize student input at all stages, one that will serve as a repeatable template to help further the school’s goal of more on-campus housing. Our hope is to have at least the shell of the house complete by the next fall, and that during the 2012-13 school year we can move on to the rest of the skills necessary to complete the first house. This is a full credit course.
Introduction to Astronomy (half credit)
It hardly seems reasonable to detect an object that by its very nature is unobservable, or to claim knowledge of the composition of stars with any scientific certainty. Yet astronomers have reached many such remarkable conclusions, and we will follow their chain of reasoning. Algebra will be a frequently used tool and while a background in physics will be helpful, this course is open to students who have no physics background at all. Topics to be discussed are a bit of astronomical history, planetary motion, stars and star formation, galaxies and cosmology. A substantial portion of this course will be devoted to observational astronomy. This will typically take place at night so there will be a requisite number of evening meetings during the semester. We will use our observatory not only to find interesting objects in the night sky, but to image and measure them as well. By the end of the course, students will know their way around the sky, and have a sense of the scale of our universe, how it came to be and the nature of the objects in it. This course is open to juniors and seniors. Concurrent enrollment in a second year of algebra is the minimum requirement for this course.
Physiological Ecology (half credit)
This advanced biology elective will use the 320 acres of Putney School’s forests to understand the distribution, adaptations and interconnections of organisms in a New England wooded ecosystem. In addition to learning about plant physiology, students will learn how to identify the most common plant and tree species living in our forests and a variety of forest types. In order to understand the whole picture of our forested landscape we will investigate our area’s geologic history, soils, natural and human disturbance histories, and current stressors (climate change, acid rain, pests, etc.). Through first-hand field work and readings, students will discuss and explore concepts like natural resource management, sustainable forestry, and other ecological and forestry principals. Other components to this course will include work with a professional forester to develop the school’s Forest Master Plan and GPS/GIS mapping projects to continue to add to the electronic data of our campus. Students will leave this class with the capacity to act as stewards in their local communities, realizing the importance of the reciprocal relationship between all living and nonliving things in the environment. Readings will include Tom Wessel’s “Reading the Forested Landscape,” excerpts from a variety of scientific texts, field guides, and historical maps and documents.
Prerequisites: Biology.
Complex Systems: Agroecology (alternate years, half credit)
“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” - Aldo Leopold
This advanced biology elective will use The Putney School campus and farm as a laboratory to learn about sustainable farming practices. Students will come away with a knowledge of how certain cycles impact life on our planet, how we can intentionally and inadvertently change these cycles, and what we can do to live in a more sustainable way. Ultimately, we will define what sustainability means to each of us by using our campus and farm as a teaching tool.
We will use the practices of our own farm and others in Southern Vermont as a lens through which to view the ecology and sustainability (both environmental and economic) of various agricultural systems. We will study the history of farming in our area, will investigate how past and current practices impact the land, will familiarize ourselves with soil and plant ecology and how nutrient cycles determine how and what we can grow, and will discuss various sustainability issues in regards to agriculture (climate change, organics, GMOs, soil acidification, water conservation, pest management, etc.). Most importantly, we will delve into the myriad approaches one can implement when trying to balance so many unpredictable systems. The focus will be on dairy farming, but we will also work with local vegetable farmers, orchardists, and permaculturists.
Students will have the opportunity to explore an area of particular interest to them and will present their research formally to our class and other interested parties. Ideally, these research projects will be with an eye toward improving a current system or implementing a new sustainability feature to farm. Readings will consist of excerpts from a variety of scientific texts, trade publications, scientific journals, newspapers, and agricultural texts and histories.
Complex Systems: The Built Environment (half credit)
“The Eyes of the Future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time.” -Terry Tempest Williams
This advanced elective will use The Putney School campus as a laboratory to learn about sustainable building systems and practices. Students will come away with a knowledge of how certain cycles impact life on our planet, how we can intentionally and inadvertently change these cycles, and what we can do to live in a more sustainable way. Ultimately, we will define what sustainability means to each of us by using our campus as a teaching tool.
The building systems trimester of this course will focus on features of our campus buildings. We will examine current geopolitical, economic, and ecological forces driving our concern about sustainability, especially with regards to energy. We will investigate the many ways we use energy at school for food, fuel, and manufactured products, will calculate how thiscontributes to our carbon footprint, will discuss alternative methods for meeting our energy needs, and will debate how science, politics, and economics affect our ability to make sustainable decisions. We will look at our older buildings to determine the best ways to make them “renewable ready” and will use the Field House to learn about and monitor the “net-zero” features and technologies we are currently implementing in this “green” building.
Students will have the opportunity to explore an area of particular interest to them and will present their research formally to our class and other interested parties. Ideally, these research projects will be with an eye toward improving a current system or implementing a new sustainability feature on campus. Readings will consist of excerpts from a variety of scientific texts, trade publications, scientific journals, and newspapers.
Biodiversity and Conservation Ecology (half credit)
This advanced biology elective is designed to give students an introduction to community ecology and a solid understanding of the systems, which support life on earth. The class will examine how ecosystems are structured by surveying energy flow, nutrient cycles, predation, competition and forms of symbiosis. Students will investigate how populations grow and decline and the factors that affect biological diversity through direct exploration of ecological systems on The Putney School campus and in the surrounding community. Emphasis will be placed on fieldwork and participation in research and monitoring underway in our region. Students will initiate their own inquiry into local manifestations of biological homogenization and the current biodiversity crisis. Class time will include discussion, habitat explorations, field labs, meetings with professionals, working in the field and presentation of fieldwork. Prerequisite: Biology and Chemistry or Physics.
Molecular Genetics (half credit)
This hands-on, investigative course is an introduction to molecular biology and genetics. Through this course we will touch on the four core pillars of science: understanding scientific principles, designing experiments, analyzing data, and clear dissemination of knowledge. While learning standard laboratory techniques such as gel electrophoresis, bacterial transformation, restriction mapping, size exclusion chromatography, western blot analysis, and tetrad analysis, we will explore the discovery of DNA and the subsequent investigations which led to our present knowledge of its structure and function. Projects will range from short-term labs that confirm principles and introduce techniques to long-term investigative projects where student data will be compiled over several terms to form a complete story. In addition we collaborate with the arts department to explore different mediums through which we can present concepts. Finally, we look at molecular genetics from a “popular science” point of view, examine current molecular genetics issues in the press, and look at how society impacts science and vice versa. Prerequisites: Successful completion of biology and chemistry or permission of instructor.
Environmental Studies: New England Farm (alternate years, half credit)
The Farm Trimester is a capstone course for the Putney student, culminating in an exhibition scale research project. The course utilizes three agricultural industries critical to New England’s social, political, economic, and ecological development: Dairying, Sugaring, and Logging. In each of these units students are presented with a series of topics and questions in the form of lectures and field trips. Lectures provide a basis for grasping key language and concepts associated with each industry. Students are then allowed to choose a topic or question for each industry that they spend a week researching and subsequently present to the class.
Students also have the option of combining Fiber Arts with the Farm Semester. Projects and assignments can revolve around the school’s prize-winning flock of Border Leicester, Romney and Merino sheep. Components of the course can include studying flock management and the history of sheep farming in New England, interviewing local mill owners, visiting textile museums, planting a natural dye garden, as well as spinning, dyeing and weaving with the wool produced on the farm.
The goal of the course is to give students the tools to design and carry out their own significant research that will be practical and/or publishable. Just as students who help paint the barn provide a lasting impact on the school, this course is meant to allow students a chance to not only further their own knowledge of agriculture but also provide critical research and information for the broader Putney community. Agriculture is an inherently interdisciplinary endeavor, necessarily entwining man and nature in critical ways. As a result, this course makes little attempt to separate and distinguish the science of agriculture from the history of agriculture and students are expected to reflect on the connections between the two. For example, the science of dairying is intimately connected with social, political, and economic changes and constraints.
Finally, the course is an attempt to provide students with a greater appreciation for the hills and valleys surrounding the school, grasping ways in which the landscape has shaped this region’s agriculture and ways in which agriculture has, in turn, changed the landscape. In this sense, the course provides an opportunity to envision a past, present, and future, connecting students to the people and landscape that surround them at Putney.
This course is open to seniors only. A half credit will be given for lab science or for history.
