Online courses directory (2511)

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 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 provides an introduction to writing about science (including medicine, technology, and engineering) for general readers. With a strong emphasis in background research, this course will help students build a foundation for strong science writing. Students will read works by accomplished science writers. Each assignment will focus on a different popular form, such as news articles, interviews, essays, and short features. 

Like other scientists, medical researchers and clinicians must be capable of presenting their work to an audience of professional peers. Unlike many scientists, however, physicians must routinely translate their sophisticated knowledge into lay terms for their own patients and for the education of the public at large. A surprising number of physicians write for less utilitarian reasons as well, choosing the narrative essay as a means of exploring the non-technical issues that emerge in their clinical practice. Over the course of the semester, we will explore the full range of writings by physicians and other health practitioners.

This class examines the role of science in the US environmental policy-making process. It investigates the methods scientists use to learn about the natural world, the way scientific knowledge accumulates, the treatment of science by advocates and the media, and the role of science in legislative, administrative and judicial decision making. It also considers how other political systems use science in an effort to put the US approach in comparative perspective.

This class is an introduction to studies in science, technology, and society (STS), through examining a series of issues, events, conflicts, and problems as illuminated by STS approaches. This iteration includes units on the Aaron Swartz case, photography, and utopia / dystopia. There are regular guest speakers, and several field trips to encourage hands on learning.

This subject exposes students to a variety of visualization techniques so that they learn to understand the work involved in producing them and to critically assess the power and limits of each. Students concentrate on areas where visualizations are crucial for meaning making and data production. Drawing on scholarship in science and technology studies on visualization, critical art theory, and core discussions in science and engineering, students work through a series of case studies in order to become better readers and producers of visualizations.

This course focuses on reading a script theatrically with a view to mounting a coherent production. Through careful, intensive reading of a variety of plays from different periods and different aesthetics, a pattern emerges for discerning what options exist for interpretating a script.

The Fall 2005 version of this course contains alternate readings and assignments sections.

This course will thoroughly educate the successful student with the knowledge and skills necessary to be a certified beginning SCUBA diver. The prerequisite for the course is passing the MIT SCUBA swim test and demonstrating a "comfort level" in the water. At the end of the class, students will attempt to pass the certification exam to become certified divers. The class is taught in two parts each week: a classroom session and a pool session. The classroom sessions along with the reading material will provide the student with the knowledge necessary to pass the written exam. At the pool, the water skills are taught in progressions that build on the previous skills, making the difficult skills seem easy.

Survey of the important aspects of modern sediments and ancient sedimentary rocks. Emphasis is on fundamental materials, features, and processes. Textures of siliciclastic sediments and sedimentary rocks: particle size, particle shape, and particle packing. Mechanics of sediment transport. Survey of siliciclastic sedimentary rocks: sandstones, conglomerates, and shales. Carbonate sediments and sedimentary rocks; cherts; evaporites. Siliciclastic and carbonate diagenesis. Paleontology, with special reference to fossils in sedimentary rocks. Modern and ancient depositional environments. Stratigraphy. Sedimentary basins. Fossil fuels: coal, petroleum.

This class is a general study of modern architecture as a response to important technological, cultural, environmental, aesthetic, and theoretical challenges after the European Enlightenment. It focuses on the theoretical, historiographic, and design approaches to architectural problems encountered in the age of industrial and post-industrial expansion across the globe, with specific attention to the dominance of European modernism in setting the agenda for the discourse of a global modernity at large. It explores modern architectural history through thematic exposition rather than as a simple chronological succession of ideas.

This course covers a number of advanced "selected topics" in the field of cryptography. The first part of the course tackles the foundational question of how to define security of cryptographic protocols in a way that is appropriate for modern computer networks, and how to construct protocols that satisfy these security definitions. For this purpose, the framework of "universally composable security" is studied and used. The second part of the course concentrates on the many challenges involved in building secure electronic voting systems, from both theoretical and practical points of view. In the third part, an introduction to cryptographic constructions based on bilinear pairings is given.

This course is an introduction to branes in string theory and their world volume dynamics. Instead of looking at the theory from the point of view of the world-sheet observer, we will approach the problem from the point of view of an observer which lives on a brane. Instead of writing down conformal field theory on the world-sheet and studying the properties of these theories, we will look at various branes in string theory and ask how the physics on their world-volume looks like.

6.780 covers statistical modeling and the control of semiconductor fabrication processes and plants. Topics covered include: design of experiments, response surface modeling, and process optimization; defect and parametric yield modeling; process/device/circuit yield optimization; monitoring, diagnosis, and feedback control of equipment and processes; and analysis and scheduling of semiconductor manufacturing operations.

In this undergraduate level seminar series, topics vary from year to year. Students present and discuss the subject matter, and are provided with instruction and practice in written and oral communication. Some experience with proofs required. The topic for fall 2008: Computational algebra and algebraic geometry.

18.104 is an undergraduate level seminar for mathematics majors. Students present and discuss subject matter taken from current journals or books. Instruction and practice in written and oral communication is provided. The topics vary from year to year. The topic for this term is Applications to Number Theory.

This course addresses the practical challenges of making an established company entrepreneurial and examines various roles related to corporate entrepreneurship. Outside speakers complement faculty lectures.

This course comprises of a seminar on planning and operation of modern electric power systems. Content varies with current interests of instructor and class; emphasis on engineering aspects, but economic issues may be examined too. Core topics include: overview of power system structure and operation; representation of components, including transmission lines, transformers, generating plants, loads; power flow analysis, dynamics and control of multimachine systems, steady-state and transient stability, system protection; economic dispatch; mobile and isolated power systems; computation and simulation.

Required for all Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences majors in the Environmental Science track, this course is an introduction to current research in the field. Stresses integration of central scientific concepts in environmental policy making and the chemistry, biology, and geology environmental science tracks. Revisits selected core themes for students who have already acquired a basic understanding of environmental science concepts. The topic for this term is geoengineering.

This advanced course in anthropology engages closely with discussions and debates about ethnographic research, ethics, and representation.