Notorious, Alfred Hitchcock's wonderful movie starring Ingrid Bergman, seems to be about intrigue and counter-intrigue in wartime South America. What are the mysterious bottles whose secrecy is so important? Where are they? How can the heroes keep them out of Nazi hands? We watch the movie, and follow these thoughts. But of course Notorious isn't about those thoughts at all: it's a love story. The story of wartime intrigue is, in Hitchcock's terms, a "maguffin": the director uses the maguffin to distract us while he sneaks up with the real plot.
My premise in this seminar is that mysteries can serve as maguffins for delving into some interesting science and technology. We'll read mysteries, but only mysteries where the crime, the detection, or their context involve some interesting piece of science. We'll talk about the mysteries as mysteries, and about the validity of the underlying science. Sometimes we'll invite guests. We'll try to learn more about our taste in mysteries, and about their scientific accuracy.
The paper assignment is simple: You are take a scientific detail from one of the mysteries we read in class (or another mystery if you prefer), do library or other research to assess how accurately the scientific detail is handled in the mystery (I prefer that your "other research" not involve recreating crimes, or experimenting with murder), and write a paper reporting your conclusions. For example, if the criminal uses an undetectable poison, is it really undetectable? If the detective identifies cigar ash unambiguously, is that possible? If a saddlebag remains identifiable after sixty years in the desert, is that reasonable? Your paper should cite relevant authorities and draw conclusions (that is, you can't simply quote everyone you read, and let the reader decide what makes sense). Especially important, your writing should be of high quality, and I should learn something from your paper.