Online courses directory (2511)

This course introduces string theory to undergraduate and is based upon Prof. Zwiebach's textbook entitled A First Course in String Theory. Since string theory is quantum mechanics of a relativistic string, the foundations of the subject can be explained to students exposed to both special relativity and basic quantum mechanics. This course develops the aspects of string theory and makes it accessible to students familiar with basic electromagnetism and statistical mechanics.

This course provides students with an opportunity to conceive, design and implement a product, using rapid prototyping methods and computer-aid tools. The first of two phases challenges each student team to meet a set of design requirements and constraints for a structural component. A course of iteration, fabrication, and validation completes this manual design cycle. During the second phase, each team conducts design optimization using structural analysis software, with their phase one prototype as a baseline.

Acknowledgements

This course is made possible thanks to a grant by the alumni sponsored Teaching and Education Enhancement Program (Class of '51 Fund for Excellence in Education, Class of '55 Fund for Excellence in Teaching, Class of '72 Fund for Educational Innovation). The instructors gratefully acknowledge the financial support. The course was approved by the Undergraduate Committee of the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2003. The instructors thank Prof. Manuel Martinez-Sanchez and the committee members for their support and suggestions.

This class is an interdisciplinary survey that explores the experiences of people of African descent through the overlapping approaches of history, literature, anthropology, legal studies, media studies, performance, linguistics, and creative writing. It connects the experiences of African Americans and of other American minorities, focusing on social, political, and cultural histories, and on linguistic patterns. Activities include lectures, discussions, workshops, and required field trips that involve minimal cost to students.

This course examines how medicine is practiced cross-culturally, with particular emphasis on Western biomedicine. Students analyze medical practice as a cultural system, focusing on the human, as opposed to the biological, side of things. Also considered is how people in different cultures think of disease, health, body, and mind.

This class explores the interrelationship between humans and natural environments. It does so by focusing on conflict over access to and use of the environment as well as ideas about "nature" in various parts of the world.

This course focuses on the fundamentals of tissue and organ response to injury from a molecular and cellular perspective. There is a special emphasis on disease states that bridge infection, inflammation, immunity, and cancer. The systems approach to pathophysiology includes lectures, critical evaluation of recent scientific papers, and student projects and presentations.

This term, we focus on hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), chronic-active hepatitis, and hepatitis virus infections. In addition to lectures, students work in teams to critically evaluate and present primary scientific papers.

Provides a comprehensive introduction to key issues and findings in object recognition in experimental, neural, computational, and applied domains. Emphasizes the problem of representation, exploring the issue of how 3-D objects should be encoded so as to efficiently recognize them from 2-D images. Second half focuses on face recognition, an ecologically important instance of the general object recognition problem. Describes experimental studies of human face recognition performance and recent attempts to mimic this ability in artificial computational systems.

The course, which spans two thirds of a semester, provides students with a research-inspired laboratory experience that introduces standard biochemical techniques in the context of investigating a current and exciting research topic, acquired resistance to the cancer drug Gleevec. Techniques include protein expression, purification, and gel analysis, PCR, site-directed mutagenesis, kinase activity assays, and protein structure viewing.

This class is part of the new laboratory curriculum in the MIT Department of Chemistry. Undergraduate Research-Inspired Experimental Chemistry Alternatives (URIECA) introduces students to cutting edge research topics in a modular format.

Acknowledgments

Development of this course was funded through an HHMI Professors grant to Professor Catherine L. Drennan.

This class is one of the core requirements for the Environmental Masters of Engineering program, in conjunction with 1.133 Masters of Engineering Concepts of Engineering Practice. It is designed to teach about environmental engineering through the use of case studies, computer software tools, and seminars from industrial experts. Case studies provide the basis for group projects as well as individual theses. Recent 1.782 projects include the MMR Superfund site on Cape Cod, appropriate wastewater treatment technology for Brazil and Honduras, point-of-use water treatment and safe storage procedures for Nepal and Ghana, Brownfields Development in Providence, RI, and water resource planning for the island of Cyprus and refugee settlements in Thailand. This class spans the entire academic year; students must register for the Fall and Spring terms.

6.002 is designed to serve as a first course in an undergraduate electrical engineering (EE), or electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) curriculum. At MIT, 6.002 is in the core of department subjects required for all undergraduates in EECS.

The course introduces the fundamentals of the lumped circuit abstraction. Topics covered include: resistive elements and networks; independent and dependent sources; switches and MOS transistors; digital abstraction; amplifiers; energy storage elements; dynamics of first- and second-order networks; design in the time and frequency domains; and analog and digital circuits and applications. Design and lab exercises are also significant components of the course. 6.002 is worth 4 Engineering Design Points. The 6.002 content was created collaboratively by Profs. Anant Agarwal and Jeffrey H. Lang.

The course uses the required textbook Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits. Agarwal, Anant, and Jeffrey H. Lang. San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Elsevier, July 2005. ISBN: 9781558607354.

This course introduces writing, graphics, meetings, oral presentation, collaboration, and design as tools for product development. The communication instruction is embedded in design projects that require students to work in teams to conceive, design, prototype and evaluate energy related products. The communication instruction focuses on the communication tasks that are integral to this design process, ranging, across design notebooks, email communications, informal oral presentations, meeting etiquette, literature searches, white papers reports, and formal presentations. In addition to the assignments specific to product development, a few assignments, especially reading and reflection, will address the cultural situation of engineers and engineering in the world at large.

Acknowledgment

The instructors would like to thank Prof. Alex Slocum and Mark Graham for their contributions to this course.

This course is concerned primarily with the revolutionary origins of American government. Topics covered include: English and American backgrounds of the Revolution; issues and arguments in the Anglo-American conflict; colonial resistance and the beginnings of republicanism; the Revolutionary War; constitution writing for the states and nation; and effects of the American Revolution. Readings emphasize documents from the period--pamphlets, correspondence, the minutes or resolutions of resistance organizations, constitutional documents and debates.

This course covers the following topics: models of manufacturing systems, including transfer lines and flexible manufacturing systems; calculation of performance measures, including throughput, in-process inventory, and meeting production commitments; real-time control of scheduling; effects of machine failure, set-ups, and other disruptions on system performance.

This course explores the forms, contents, and context of world traditions in dance that played a crucial role in shaping American concert dance. For example, we will identify dances from an African American vernacular tradition that were transferred from the social space to the concert stage. We will explore the artistic lives of such American dance artists as Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, and Alvin Ailey along with Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, George Balanchine, and Merce Cunningham as American dance innovators. Of particular importance to our investigation will be the construction of gender and autobiography that lie at the heart of concert dance practice, and the ways in which these qualities have been choreographed by American artists.

This course examines theoretical and empirical approaches to understanding the process of late development. Topics include the role of the state in alleviating or exacerbating poverty, the politics of industrial policy and planning and the relationship between institutional change and growth. How over the past century have some of the world's poorest nations achieved wealth? How have others remained mired in poverty? What are the social consequences for alternative strategies of development?

This course is designed to help you develop skills that will enable you to produce clear and effective scientific and technical documents. We will focus on basic principles of good writing-which scientific and technical writing shares with other forms of writing-and on types of documents common in scientific and technical fields and organizations. While the emphasis will be on writing, oral communication of scientific and technical information will form an important component of the course, as well.

This class covers the analysis, design, implementation and testing of various forms of digital communication based on group collaboration. Students are encouraged to think about the Web and other new digital interactive media not just in terms of technology but also broader issues such as language (verbal and visual), design, information architecture, communication and community. Students work in small groups on a semester-long project of their choice.

This class includes a brief review of applied aerodynamics and modern approaches in aircraft stability and control. Topics covered include static stability and trim; stability derivatives and characteristic longitudinal and lateral-directional motions; and physical effects of the wing, fuselage, and tail on aircraft motion. Control methods and systems are discussed, with emphasis on flight vehicle stabilization by classical and modern control techniques; time and frequency domain analysis of control system performance; and human-pilot models and pilot-in-the-loop controls with applications. Other topics covered include V/STOL stability, dynamics, and control during transition from hover to forward flight; parameter sensitivity; and handling quality analysis of aircraft through variable flight conditions. There will be a brief discussion of motion at high angles-of-attack, roll coupling, and other nonlinear flight regimes.

6.004 offers an introduction to the engineering of digital systems. Starting with MOS transistors, the course develops a series of building blocks — logic gates, combinational and sequential circuits, finite-state machines, computers and finally complete systems. Both hardware and software mechanisms are explored through a series of design examples.

6.004 is required material for any EECS undergraduate who wants to understand (and ultimately design) digital systems. A good grasp of the material is essential for later courses in digital design, computer architecture and systems. The problem sets and lab exercises are intended to give students "hands-on" experience in designing digital systems; each student completes a gate-level design for a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) processor during the semester.

This subject offers an interactive introduction to discrete mathematics oriented toward computer science and engineering. The subject coverage divides roughly into thirds:

1. Fundamental concepts of mathematics: Definitions, proofs, sets, functions, relations.
2. Discrete structures: graphs, state machines, modular arithmetic, counting.
3. Discrete probability theory.

On completion of 6.042J, students will be able to explain and apply the basic methods of discrete (noncontinuous) mathematics in computer science. They will be able to use these methods in subsequent courses in the design and analysis of algorithms, computability theory, software engineering, and computer systems.

Interactive site components can be found on the Unit pages in the left-hand navigational bar, starting with Unit 1: Proofs.