About us
What is InterTOK?
InterTOK is a yearly event in which students from the Costa Rican IB community participate in an international conference delivered by Mr. Andy Fletcher who delivers his exposition ¨Life, the Universe and EVERYTHING¨ that covers the development of scientific thought ranging from positivism, to relativity and quantum physics.
The lecture is based on the Theory of Knowledge course (mandatory for all IB students worldwide) and during the event we gather students from all seven IB Costa Rican schools who we divide into mixed work groups where they partake in discussions, experiments and activities guided by an experienced TOK teacher.
If you want more information on the lecture please visit Mr. Fletcher’s website www.tokseminars.org
Who is Andy Fletcher?
Andy Fletcher is the president and CEO of Life, the Universe and Everything, Inc., A non profit organization dedicated to offer 20th century physics as well as on tri-cultural kids. He has delivered seminars in 124 schools in 94 cities in 36 countries.
He graduated from the American International School of Zurich (now the ZIS), attended universities in Texas, Japan, and California studying History, Math, English Literature and Philosophy. He's published close to 200 articles and radio commentaries along with portions of a number of books a monthly humor column, and has written several entire books that nobody really wanted to publish, so he published them himself. He speaks German, Swiss German, French, Japanese, and Spanish, ranging in skill from bad to very bad.
Sesiones
Session 1: The Newtonian Universe: Was what science thought was really true really true? Is the universe a big machine, predictable in all of its parts? Not so much. In the late 1800s, scientists pretty well thought they had the whole universe figured out. Science was finished except for measuring things better. Let's just say "oops" about that. They couldn't have been more wrong.
Session 2: Time and Space and Gravity and Mr. Einstein: Albert didn't do so well in school, so he wrote five physics papers in one year and won the Nobel Prize - for the worst paper! And he changed the course of human history. Not bad for a guy who flunked his first university physics class. It's all about Relativity and Black Holes and Big Bang, and nothing is what you think it is.
Session 3: Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we can imagine: Down the Rabbit Hole we go into Red Pill Land - the Quantum Universe of tunneling and cats in boxes and particles talking to each other and much much more. Quantum physics is ridiculous - but it's true. And you have no idea how ridiculous, and how true, it is.
Session 4: So what's the universe really like anyway? The great questions of life, the universe, and everything – why is the universe here? Why is there something rather than nothing? How did the universe go from being just big and empty and hot to where the most complicated thing in the known universe is sitting between your ears? Why is there matter in the universe, and for that matter, why is there anything in the universe? Since there is order, is there an orderer?