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Seventeen students and one professor meet to tackle some of the most mind-boggling contradictions and theories of time and the universe, one hour at a time.

Led by physics Professor Michael Gutperle, the Fiat Lux seminar titled “What is Time?” consists of fifty minutes devoted to discussing time in the context of physics, black holes, relativity, the beginning and the end.

“My goal is really to show them physics is not just something they have to take because they want to go to medical school but something very interesting and has profound consequences about how we think about nature and how we think about the universe,” Gutperle said.

This week, the students began talking about Albert Einstein’s famous theory of relativity, which was published a hundred years ago, revolutionizing the way time and the universe were perceived.

Before Einstein rocked physics with relativity, one prevailing theory had guided the field since Isaac Newton defined the laws of matter: time was absolute and inflexible.

“That was kind of the point of view that sometimes we intuitively have. Physicists had really inscribed in their theories that there is an absolute way to measure time,” Gutperle said. “That was completely revised.”

Gutperle hopes to give his students a sense of how the perception of time has changed over the centuries, and continues to be modified now.

“In high school physics, time was something that was a fuzzy concept for me,” said Nina Norman, a second year undeclared student in the seminar. “This was a whole class talking about different theories of time and it sounded really interesting to me.”

Notes from the class Web site in Gutperle’s handwriting include doodles of cars and bicycles moving at relative speeds, models of time reversal, and the arch of a thrown ball.

Though some of the concepts are difficult to grasp without complex equations, Gutperle hopes to leave out the math and still get the idea across. Students enrolled in the class hail from all backgrounds – from economics to English.

“I wanted to talk about physics without being in a big class with 200 people – you have to have homework, exams, you feel a little bit like an old-style school master,” he said.

“You try to do your best to explain it and make it fun, but because everyone has to do well and get the grade there are a lot of constraints,” Gutperle said.

The theoretical physicist decided to hold the Fiat Lux seminar after handing out a questionnaire to students in Physics 6A: Physics for Life Science Majors. The majority of students in the class viewed it as an obligation between them and medical school, and a potential threat to their grade point average.

“I think physics gets a bad rep very often and maybe justifiably so,” Gutperle said. “For a lot of people, physics is something they have to take here, they’re forced to take, and they’re not really interested in it – it’s a stumbling block.”

The seminar gives him a forum to share his passion for the field, and introduce the works of someone he feels is “obviously one of the greatest scientists who ever lived.”

Theoretical physicists like Gutperle continue to follow in Einstein’s footsteps, attempting to reconcile the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.

Working primarily with calculations using pen and paper, they search for the answers to the questions of the universe, and attempt to unify the laws of elementary particles with the exceptions of relativity.

“The dream of unifying gravity with all other fundamental interactions is still a holy grail of physics,” Gutperle said.

He wonders at the genius of a man who could revolutionize an entire field in one year. His Fiat Lux seminar has shed light on Einstein’s thought experiments, and demonstrated that awe can be contagious.

“Some of these things Einstein started thinking about when he was 17 years old,” Norman said. “That’s younger than any of us, and that’s crazy to me.”