Online courses directory (2511)
We will study the fundamental principles of classical mechanics, with a modern emphasis on the qualitative structure of phase space. We will use computational ideas to formulate the principles of mechanics precisely. Expression in a computational framework encourages clear thinking and active exploration.
We will consider the following topics: the Lagrangian formulation; action, variational principles, and equations of motion; Hamilton's principle; conserved quantities; rigid bodies and tops; Hamiltonian formulation and canonical equations; surfaces of section; chaos; canonical transformations and generating functions; Liouville's theorem and Poincaré integral invariants; Poincaré-Birkhoff and KAM theorems; invariant curves and cantori; nonlinear resonances; resonance overlap and transition to chaos; properties of chaotic motion.
Ideas will be illustrated and supported with physical examples. We will make extensive use of computing to capture methods, for simulation, and for symbolic analysis.
This course introduces students to the principles of computation. Upon completion of 6.001, students should be able to explain and apply the basic methods from programming languages to analyze computational systems, and to generate computational solutions to abstract problems. Substantial weekly programming assignments are an integral part of the course. This course is worth 4 Engineering Design Points.
This course features a core framework for an interest-based, problem-solving approach to technology, logistics and other systems-oriented negotiations. A comprehensive approach to dispute resolution in organizations and complex engineered systems is also developed. The course builds key interactive skills, including communications skills, dealing with difficult people, negotiating over the "rules of game," and cross-cultural negotiations. Assignments center on analysis of negotiated interactions and assessing dispute resolution systems.
From Abilify to Zyrtec, the world is full of interesting drugs. Such substances have cured diseases, started wars, and ended careers. This seminar will explain how drugs can elicit a range of medicinal and recreational effects. Planned topics include over-the-counter drugs and "dietary supplements," drugs of abuse, treatments for neurological disorders, psychiatric medications, and many more. Prior experience is neither expected nor required, but student participation is essential.
This course elaborates the history of Ancient Greece from the Bronze Age to the death of Alexander. It covers major social, economic, political, and religious trends. It also includes discussions on Homer, heroism, and the Greek identity; the hoplite revolution and the rise of the city-state; Herodotus, Persia, and the (re)birth of history; Empire, Thucydidean rationalism, and the Peloponnesian War; Platonic constructs; Aristotle, Macedonia, and Hellenism. Emphasis is on use of primary sources in translation.
This course is designed to introduce and help students understand the changes and continuities in the lives of women in South Asia from a historical perspective. Using gender as a lens of examining the past, we will examine how politics of race, class, caste and religion affected and continue to impact women in South Asian countries, primarily in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. We will reflect upon current debates within South Asian women's history in order to examine some of the issues and problems that arise in re-writing the past from a gendered perspective and these are found in primary documents, secondary readings, films, newspaper articles, and the Internet.
This course illuminates current theories about autism together with challenges faced by people on the autism spectrum. Theories in communicating, interacting socially, managing cognitive and affective overload, and achieving independent lifestyles are covered. In parallel, the course presents state-of-the-art technologies being developed for helping improve both theoretical understanding and practical outcomes. Participants are expected to meet and interact with people on the autism spectrum. Weekly reading, discussion, and a term project are required.
15.012 Applied Macro- and International Economics uses case studies to investigate the macroeconomic environment in which firms operate. The first half of the course develops the basic tools of macroeconomic management: monetary, fiscal, and exchange rate policy. The class discusses recent emerging market and financial crises by examining their causes and considering how best to address them and prevent them from recurring in the future. The second half evaluates different strategies of economic development. Topics covered in the second half of this course include growth, the role of debt and foreign aid, and the reliance on natural resources.
This class will study the behavior of photovoltaic solar energy systems, focusing on the behavior of "stand-alone" systems. The design of stand-alone photovoltaic systems will be covered. This will include estimation of costs and benefits, taking into account any available government subsidies. Introduction to the hardware elements and their behavior will be included.
This course provides an introduction to the chemistry of biological, inorganic, and organic molecules. The emphasis is on basic principles of atomic and molecular electronic structure, thermodynamics, acid-base and redox equilibria, chemical kinetics, and catalysis.
In an effort to illuminate connections between chemistry and biology, a list of the biology-, medicine-, and MIT research-related examples used in 5.111 is provided in Biology-Related Examples.
Acknowledgements
Development and implementation of the biology-related materials in this course were funded through an HHMI Professors grant to Prof. Catherine L. Drennan.
1.464 examines the long term effects of information technology on business strategy in the real estate and construction industry. Considerations include: supply chain, allocation of risk, impact on contract obligations and security, trends toward consolidation, and the convergence of information transparency and personal effectiveness. Resources are drawn from the world of dot.com entrepreneurship and "old economy" responses.
Distributed algorithms are algorithms designed to run on multiple processors, without tight centralized control. In general, they are harder to design and harder to understand than single-processor sequential algorithms. Distributed algorithms are used in many practical systems, ranging from large computer networks to multiprocessor shared-memory systems. They also have a rich theory, which forms the subject matter for this course.
The core of the material will consist of basic distributed algorithms and impossibility results, as covered in Prof. Lynch's book Distributed Algorithms. This will be supplemented by some updated material on topics such as self-stabilization, wait-free computability, and failure detectors, and some new material on scalable shared-memory concurrent programming.
This course covers differential, integral and vector calculus for functions of more than one variable. These mathematical tools and methods are used extensively in the physical sciences, engineering, economics and computer graphics.
Course Formats
The materials have been organized to support independent study. The website includes all of the materials you will need to understand the concepts covered in this subject. The materials in this course include:
- Lecture Videos recorded on the MIT campus
- Recitation Videos with problem-solving tips
- Examples of solutions to sample problems
- Problem for you to solve, with solutions
- Exams with solutions
- Interactive Java Applets ("Mathlets") to reinforce key concepts
Content Development
Denis Auroux
Arthur Mattuck
Jeremy Orloff
John Lewis
This course describes the processes by which mass, momentum, and energy are transported in plasmas, with special reference to magnetic confinement fusion applications.
The Fokker-Planck collision operator and its limiting forms, as well as collisional relaxation and equilibrium, are considered in detail. Special applications include a Lorentz gas, Brownian motion, alpha particles, and runaway electrons.
The Braginskii formulation of classical collisional transport in general geometry based on the Fokker-Planck equation is presented.
Neoclassical transport in tokamaks, which is sensitive to the details of the magnetic geometry, is considered in the high (Pfirsch-Schluter), low (banana) and intermediate (plateau) regimes of collisionality.
We will explore the changing political choices and ethical dilemmas of American scientists from the atomic scientists of World War II to biologists in the present wrestling with the questions raised by cloning and other biotechnologies. As well as asking how we would behave if confronted with the same choices, we will try to understand the choices scientists have made by seeing them in their historical and political contexts. Some of the topics covered include: the original development of nuclear weapons and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the effects of the Cold War on American science; the space shuttle disasters; debates on the use of nuclear power, wind power, and biofuels; abuse of human subjects in psychological and other experiments; deliberations on genetically modified food, the human genome project, human cloning, embryonic stem cell research; and the ethics of archaeological science in light of controversies over museum collections.
How — and why — do people seek to capture everyday life on film? What can we learn from such films? This course challenges distinctions commonly made between documentary and ethnographic films to consider how human cultural life is portrayed in both. It considers the interests, which motivate such filmmakers ranging from curiosity about "exotic" people to a concern with capturing "real life" to a desire for advocacy. Students will view documentaries about people both in the U.S. and abroad and will consider such issues as the relationship between film images and "reality," the tensions between art and observation, and the ethical relationship between filmmakers and those they film.
This course explores photography as a disciplined way of seeing, of investigating landscapes and expressing ideas. Readings, observations, and photographs form the basis of discussions on landscape, light, significant detail, place, poetics, narrative, and how photography can inform design and planning, among other issues.
The class website can be found here: Sites in Sight: Photography as Inquiry.
Competition in Telecommunications provides an introduction to the economics, business strategies, and technology of telecommunications markets. This includes markets for wireless communications, local and long-distance services, and customer equipment. The convergence of computers, cable TV and telecommunications and the competitive emergence of the Internet are covered in depth. A number of speakers from leading companies in the industry will give course lectures.
The course examines various aspects of culture in both premodern and modern East Asia, ranging from literature, art, performance, and cuisine to contemporary pop culture (film, manga, anime, etc.).
This course investigates relationships between two media, film and literature, studying works linked across the two media by genre, topic, and style. It aims to sharpen appreciation of major works of cinema and of literary narrative. The course explores how artworks challenge and cross cultural, political and aesthetic boundaries. It includes some attention to theory of narrative. Films to be studied include works by Akira Kurosawa, John Ford, Francis Ford Coppolla, Clint Eastwood, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, and Federico Fellini, among others. Literary works include texts by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Honoré de Balzac, Henry James and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
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