1. What was Darwin's theory of pangenesis and how did it fit his model of blending inheritance? How did it allow for the influence of the environment on hereditary characters?
2. How was the idea of environmental influence criticized by Weismann? What his idea of "germ plasm"?
3. What were Mendel's laws on the segregation of traits and on recessive and dominant traits? How did he support these ideas with evidence?
4. What was Galton's argument regarding the inheritance of genius and how did he attempt to prove it?
1. What is the definition of eugenics? What is the difference between positive and negative eugenics?
2. What was "feeblemindedness"? Why did scientists want to eliminate these people from the population?
3. What was the argument presented for sterilization based on the Jukes family history?
4. How was feeblemindedness portrayed in the Norton pamphlet on “Selective Sterilization in Primer Form”?
5. How does the Carrie Buck case illustrate the concerns of eugenecists? How does it illustrate social values of the time?
1. What was the Kallikak family study, and how did it differ from the Jukes family study? What were its conclusions?
2. What were five factors that contributed to a growing concern over immigration and its threat to "nativism." (Be sure you know what American nativism was.)
3. What was the Immigration Restriction Act? How did passage of the act further eugenic goals?
4. How were eugenic doctrines popularized? What are some examples of positive eugenics?
5. What is the concept of "mental age" on which the Binet test was based? What did early researchers think they were measuring with these tests?
1. What were the results of the I.Q. test administered to World War I draftees? How did some people criticize this test and its results?
2. How did increasing research on development and genetics call into question the simple unit-character assumptions of earlier eugenecists?
3. What concerns did German “racial hygienists” express about different birthrates among Germans, Slavic peoples, and southern Europeans?
4. How was the rise of National Socialism (Nazism) in Germany based on promoting the genetically “healthy” and preventing reproduction among the “unhealthy”? Who was included in the unhealthy category?
5. What was the purpose of the German “health courts”? How did U.S. sterilization laws serve as models for German sterilization programs?
1. How were Margaret Sanger’s view on birth control similar to and different from eugenics?
2. What were the fears over the “population explosion” in the 1960s?
3.What similarities are there between the case of the Relf sisters and Madrigal vs. Quilligan?
4. How were sterilizations in the 1960s and 1970s similar to and different from the eugenic sterilizations of the 1920s and 1930s?
5. Why were so many women sterilized in Puerto Rico?
1. What are the basic particles of the atom? What is an isotope?
2. What were the contributions of Roentgen, Becquerel, and Marie Curie to the discovery of radioactivity?
3. How did Rutherford explain radioactive decay (Experiment 1)? How are atoms of one element transmuted into another element during radioactive decay?
4. What was Thompson’s model of the atom? What was Rutherford's model and how did he prove he was right (Experiment 2)?
5. What is the basic idea behind a nuclear chain reaction (fission)? Be able to explain 92235U → 56142Ba + 3691Kr + 3 neutrons + energy.
6. What were the circumstances that led Einstein to write to Roosevelt? What did he tell him?
1. How did the timing of the various decisions about deciding to make a bomb, making the bomb, and deciding to drop it coincide with the course of World War II? 2. What effect did the death of Roosevelt have on the decision to drop the bomb?
3. How did the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union affect the decision to drop the bomb?
4. In what ways did Bohr, Szilard, and Franck try to get the politicians to think about the consequences of dropping the bomb? What were their various recommendations about international control?
5. How was the Interim Committee involved in the decision to drop the bomb? Which scientists advised the committee and what did they recommend?
1. How did Oppenheimer's attitudes toward the atomic bomb change over his lifetime? After the war was over, what was he advocating in relation to the bomb?
2. What were the reasons for and against initiating the project to build the atomic bomb? Did these reasons change during the course of the war?
3. What were the reasons in 1945 for and against dropping the bomb in a surprise attack?
4. With the benefit of hindsight, of more knowledge about the actual state of Japan in 1945, and of further understanding about the effects of the bomb, do you still think that the reasons you suggested in answer to question 3 are valid? Do you think there was any way to have done things differently?
1. How did the United States people first learn of the bombing of Hiroshima? What were they told?
2. What alternative to using the bomb was always mentioned by those justifying the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
3. What was the Potsdam ultimatum and how did the Japanese respond? Why did they reject it?
4. What possibilities for a negotiated peace settlement with Japan existed during the summer of 1945? Why were they unsuccessful?
5. When and how did the American public first begin to learn about the effects of the bombings on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
1. What were some of the reactions of scientists to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
2. What were the major concerns of scientists after the war regarding the development and control of nuclear weapons?
3. How did the events of the Cold War influence the development of the Hydrogen Bomb?
4. What was the recommendation of the General Advisory Committee concerning the H-bomb, and on what reasons was it based?
1. In the years after World War II, how did scientists justify further research and development of nuclear weapons? How did cultural images facilitate this process? 2. What prompted U.S. policymakers to launch the "peaceful atom" campaign?
3. How was civil defense used to encourage public acquiescence during the early years of the nuclear arms race?
4. Why were so many civil defense campaigns directed toward women and children?
5. Did CDA materials provide an accurate portrayal of nuclear war?
