Online courses directory (272)

This course reviews momentum and energy principles, and then covers the following topics: Hamilton's principle and Lagrange's equations; three-dimensional kinematics and dynamics of rigid bodies; steady motions and small deviations therefrom, gyroscopic effects, and causes of instability; free and forced vibrations of lumped-parameter and continuous systems; nonlinear oscillations and the phase plane; nonholonomic systems; and an introduction to wave propagation in continuous systems.

This course was originally developed by Professor T. Akylas.

This course provides a broad theoretical basis for system identification, estimation, and learning. Students will study least squares estimation and its convergence properties, Kalman filters, noise dynamics and system representation, function approximation theory, neural nets, radial basis functions, wavelets, Volterra expansions, informative data sets, persistent excitation, asymptotic variance, central limit theorems, model structure selection, system order estimate, maximum likelihood, unbiased estimates, Cramer-Rao lower bound, Kullback-Leibler information distance, Akaike's information criterion, experiment design, and model validation.

This course is an introduction to the fundamental aspects of science and engineering necessary for exploring, observing, and utilizing the oceans. Hands-on projects focus on instrumentation in the marine environment and the design of ocean observatories for ocean monitoring and exploration. Topics include acoustics, sound speed and refraction, sounds generated by ships and marine animals, sonar systems and their principles of operation, hydrostatic behavior of floating and submerged bodies geared towards ocean vehicle design, stability of ocean vessels, and the application of instrumentation and electronics in the marine environment. Students work with sensor systems and deploy them in the field to gather and analyze real world data.

4.125 is the third undergraduate design studio. This subject introduces skills needed to build within a landscape establishing continuities between the built and natural world. Students learn to build appropriately through analysis of landscape and climate for a chosen site, and to conceptualize design decisions through drawings and models.

This class is jointly sponsored by the MIT Museum, Massachusetts Bay Maritime Artisans, the Department of Mechanical Engineering's Center for Ocean Engineering, and the Department of Architecture. The course teaches the fundamental steps in traditional boat design and demonstrates connections between craft and modern methods. Instructors provide vessel design orientation and then students carve their own shape ideas in the form of a wooden half-hull model. Experts teach the traditional skills of visualizing and carving your model in this phase of the class. After the models are completed, a practicing naval architect guides students in translating shape from models into a lines plan. The final phase of the class is a comparative analysis of the designs generated by the group.

This course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.

This is an introductory course in research methods and proposal writing. The course is designed to give students experience in hypothesis and specific aims development and an overview of the use of the scientific study design for solving health-related problems. The governing principle of the course is to provide students with an interactive

This is an Exploratorium Teacher Institute professional development course open to any middle or high school science teacher. This course is designed to help science teachers infuse their curriculum with hands-on STEM activities that support the NGSS engineering practices.

This class presents the application of principles of soil mechanics. It considers the following topics: the origin and nature of soils; soil classification; the effective stress principle; hydraulic conductivity and seepage; stress-strain-strength behavior of cohesionless and cohesive soils and application to lateral earth stresses; bearing capacity and slope stability; consolidation theory and settlement analysis; and laboratory and field methods for evaluation of soil properties in design practice.

Modern computer technology requires an understanding of both hardware and software, as the interaction between the two offers a framework for mastering the fundamentals of computing. The purpose of this course is to cultivate an understanding of modern computing technology through an in-depth study of the interface between hardware and software. In this course, you will study the history of modern computing technology before learning about modern computer architecture and a number of its important features, including instruction sets, processor arithmetic and control, the Von Neumann architecture, pipelining, memory management, storage, and other input/output topics. The course will conclude with a look at the recent switch from sequential processing to parallel processing by looking at the parallel computing models and their programming implications.

This course begins with a comparative review of conventional and advanced multiple attribute decision making (MADM) models in engineering practice. Next, a new application of particular MADM models in reliable material selection of sensitive structural components as well as a multi-criteria Taguchi optimization method is discussed. Other specific topics include dealing with uncertainties in material properties, incommensurability in decision-makers opinions for the same design, objective ways of weighting performance indices, rank stability analysis, compensations and non-compensations.

This course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.

DNS is an integral part of working with the Internet, but what if you don't understand how it works? This course will give you all the insight you need to have a basic understanding of DNS and how it translates http://74.125.224.72/ into http://google.com/! The class is designed for web professionals and almost anyone looking for a walkthrough on general DNS concepts. We will begin with an introduction to the Domain naming system then move on to how the client computers translate DNS information. Lastly, we will look at the major components of a DNS server and clear up how to work with DNS zones and subdomains.

This course develops the theory and design of hydrofoil sections, including lifting and thickness problems for sub-cavitating sections, unsteady flow problems, and computer-aided design of low drag cavitation-free sections. It also covers lifting line and lifting surface theory with applications to hydrofoil craft, rudder, control surface, propeller and wind turbine rotor design. Other topics include computer-aided design of wake adapted propellers; steady and unsteady propeller thrust and torque; performance analysis and design of wind turbine rotors in steady and stochastic wind; and numerical principles of vortex lattice and lifting surface panel methods. Projects illustrate the development of computational methods for lifting, propeller and wind turbine flows, and use of state-of-the-art simulation methods for lifting, propulsion and wind turbine applications.

This course builds on the conceptual framework of information needs and the use of information provided in SI 501. In that course the focus is on techniques that information professionals use to understand the needs of people who employ a wide variety of information systems. Emphasis is on professional practice. Professional practice occurs both in institutional settings (including public, academic, special, and school libraries and information centers) and directly between information professionals and clients (such as information brokers). Prepares students for need-based, client-centered professional practice in a variety of information environments (including public, academic, special libraries and school media centers) in a period of major change. Professional practice consists of a variety of functions and practices which increase client access to information and knowledge. It is based both on an understanding of user information constructs and on knowledge of information systems and services. Course addresses concepts related to public libraries, academic libraries, special libraries, medical libraries, school libraries, and information centers, strategy and strategies, competency, and competencies. Course Level: Graduate This Work, SI 643 - Professional Practice in Libraries and Information Centers, by Joan C. Durrance is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

In the third edition of Solar Energy, you will learn to design a complete photovoltaic system. This course introduces the technology that converts solar energy into electricity, heat and solar fuels with a main focus on electricity generation. Photovoltaic (PV) devices are presented as advanced semiconductor devices that deliver electricity directly from sunlight. The emphasis is on understanding the working principle of a solar cell, fabrication of solar cells, PV module construction and the design of a PV system. You will gain a greater understanding of the principles of the photovoltaic conversion— the conversion of light into electricity. This course explores the advantages, limitations and challenges of different solar cell technologies, such as crystalline silicon solar cell technology, thin film solar cell technologies and the latest novel solar cell concepts as studied on lab-scale. We will discuss the specifications of solar modules and demonstrate how to design a complete solar system for any particular application.

Education Method

The class will consist of a collection of eight to twelve minute lecture videos, exercises, assignments and exams. Specified assignments and the three exams will determine the final grade. The new textbook on “Solar Energy, basics, technology and systems” from the Delft University of Technology will be available for the students on-line and free of charge. Your course staff will encourage and challenge you to learn from, and interact with, your fellow students by helping each other and sharing ideas and best practices, in the course forum. We were happy to see the incredible number of interesting student videos on solar energy systems from all over the world in the previous edition of this course. 

Professor Smets was the first ever recipient of the edX Prize for Exceptional Contributions to Online Teaching and Learning. His previous online courses attracted over 150,000 students worldwide, who were inspired to take their first steps in the transition to renewable energy. 

LICENSE

The course materials of this course are Copyright Delft University of Technology and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC-BY-NC-SA) 4.0 International License.

Statics is the study of methods for quantifying the forces between bodies. Forces are responsible for maintaining balance and causing motion of bodies, or changes in their shape. You encounter a great number and variety of examples of forces every day, such as when you press a button, turn a doorknob, or run your hands through your hair. Motion and changes in shape are critical to the functionality of man-made objects as well as objects the nature. Statics is an essential prerequisite for many branches of engineering, such as mechanical, civil, aeronautical, and bioengineering, which address the various consequences of forces. This course contains many interactive elements, including: simulations; “walk-throughs” that integrate voice and graphics to explain a procedure or a difficult concept; and, most prominently, computer tutors in which students practice problem solving with hints and feedback. This course uses algebra and trigonometry and is suitable for use with either calculus- or non-calculus-based academic statics courses. Completion of a beginning physics course is helpful for success in statics, but not required. Many key physics concepts are included in this course.

Recommender systems guide people to interesting materials based on information from other people. A large design space of alternative ways to organize such systems exists. The information that other people provide may come from explicit ratings, tags, or reviews, or implicitly from how they spend their time or money. The information can be aggregated and used to select, filter, or sort items. The recommendations may be personalized to the preferences of different users. Course Level: Graduate This Work, SI 580 - Understanding Records and Archives: Principles and Practices, by Paul Conway is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

This course covers the basic principles of elastic behavior for different materials such as wood, steel, concrete, and composite materials and compares the properties and applications of materials generally. It investigates cross sectional stress and strain behavior in flexure and in shear, and torsion as well as the stability of beams and columns. The qualitative behavior of combined stresses and fracture in materials is also covered. Course Level: Undergraduate This Work, ARCH 324 - Structures 2, by Peter von Buelow is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

This course provides an overview of and introduction to the fundamentals of aeronautics, using the history of aviation as a story line. The course uses examples from the very beginning of aviation (the Montgolfier brothers’ balloon flight in 1783 and the Wright brothers’ heavier-than-air flight in 1903) and continues all the way through to the current Airbus A380 and future aircraft. During this trajectory three major topics are discussed: aeronautics, aerodynamics and flight mechanics.

Lectures are frequently accompanied by related exercises and demonstrations. The course also incorporates (design) challenges/competitions, based on the knowledge obtained through the lectures.

LICENSE
The course materials of this course are Copyright Delft University of Technology and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC-BY-NC-SA) 4.0 International License.

This Work, SI 615 - Seminar on Digital Libraries, by is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. This is a special topics seminar focusing on the current state of

This course is taught in Mandarin. A basic EE course for the general MOOCer about circuits and multiple-disciplinary case studies. (Taught in Mandarin.)