Online courses directory (2511)

This course covers the fundamental concepts of structural mechanics with applications to marine, civil, and mechanical structures. Topics include analysis of small deflections of beams, moderately large deflections of beams, columns, cables, and shafts; elastic and plastic buckling of columns, thin walled sections and plates; exact and approximate methods; energy methods; principle of virtual work; introduction to failure analysis of structures. We will include examples from civil, mechanical, offshore, and ship structures such as the collision and grounding of ships.

This course covers the fundamental concepts of structural mechanics with applications to marine, civil, and mechanical structures. Topics include analysis of small deflections of beams, moderately large deflections of beams, columns, cables, and shafts; elastic and plastic buckling of columns, thin walled sections and plates; exact and approximate methods; energy methods; principle of virtual work; introduction to failure analysis of structures. We will include examples from civil, mechanical, offshore, and ship structures such as the collision and grounding of ships.

This course deals with structural components in nuclear power plant systems, their functional purposes, operating conditions, and mechanical-structural design requirements. It combines mechanics techniques with models of material behavior to determine adequacy of component design. Considerations include mechanical loading, brittle fracture, in-elastic behavior, elevated temperatures, neutron irradiation, and seismic effects.

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 provides a comprehensive introduction to crystalline structure, crystal chemistry, and bonding in rock-forming minerals. It introduces the theory relating crystal structure and crystal symmetry to physical properties such as refractive index, elastic modulus, and seismic velocity. It surveys the distribution of silicate, oxide, and metallic minerals in the interiors and on the surfaces of planets, and discusses the processes that led to their formation. It also addresses why diamonds are hard and why micas split into thin sheets.

Taking as its starting point the works of one of Britain's most respected, prolific—and funny—living dramatists, this seminar will explore a wide range of knowledge in fields such as math, philosophy, politics, history and art. The careful reading and discussion of plays by (Sir) Tom Stoppard and some of his most compelling contemporaries (including Caryl Churchill, Anna Deveare Smith and Howard Barker) will allow us to time-travel and explore other cultures, and to think about the medium of drama as well as one writer's work in depth. Some seminar participants will report on earlier plays that influenced these writers, others will research everything from Lord Byron's poetry to the bridges of Konigsberg, from Dadaism to Charter 77. Employing a variety of critical approaches (both theoretical and theatrical), we will consider what postmodernity means, as applied to these plays. In the process, we will analyze how drama connects with both the culture it represents and that which it addresses in performance. We will also explore the wit and verbal energy of these contemporary dramatists…not to mention, how Fermat's theorem, classical translation, and chaos theory become the stuff of stage comedy.

This course explores the creation (and creativity) of the modern scientific and cultural world through study of western Europe in the 17th century, the age of Descartes and Newton, Shakespeare, Rembrandt and Molière. The class compares period thinking to present-day debates about the scientific method, art, religion, and society. This team-taught, interdisciplinary subject draws on a wide range of literary, dramatic, historical, and scientific texts and images, and involves theatrical experimentation as well as reading, writing, researching and conversing.

What has been said of Moby-Dick—that it's the greatest novel no one ever reads—could just as well be said of any number of American "classics" like The Scarlet Letter, Uncle Tom's Cabin, or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This course reconsiders a small number of nineteenth-century American novels by presenting each in a surprising context.

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.

How do literature, philosophy, film and other arts respond to the profound changes in world view and lifestyle that mark the twentieth century? This course considers a broad range of works from different countries, different media, and different genres, in exploring the transition to a decentered "Einsteinian" universe.

William Butler Yeats occupies a dominant position in the lives and work of the Irish poets who followed him. We will explore some of that poetry, and consider how later poets, especially female poets, tried to come to grips with, or escape from, that dominance. As a seminar, the subject will place special emphasis on student involvement and control. I will ask you to submit one ten-twelve page essay, two shorter (five page) essays, and to accept the role of "leadoff person," perhaps more than once, That role will demand that you choose from among the assigned readings for that session the poem we should focus upon, and to offer either a provocative articulation of what the poem is about, or a provocative question which the poem confronts, and which we should grapple with, as well.

The disciplines of music history and music theory have been slow to embrace the digital revolutions that have transformed other fields' text-based scholarship (history and literature in particular). Computational musicology opens the door to the possibility of understanding—even if at a broad level—trends and norms of behavior of large repertories of music. This class presents the major approaches, results, and challenges of computational musicology through readings in the field, gaining familiarity with datasets, and hands on workshops and assignments on data analysis and "corpus" (i.e., repertory) studies. Class sessions alternate between discussion/lecture and labs on digital tools for studying music. A background in music theory and/or history is required, and experience in computer programming will be extremely helpful. Coursework culminates in an independent research project in quantitative or computational musicology that will be presented to the class as a whole.

Is marriage a patriarchal institution? Much feminist scholarship has characterized it that way, but now in the context of the recent Massachusetts Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage, the meaning of marriage itself demands serious re-examination. This course will discuss history, literature, film, and legal scholarship, making use of cross-cultural, sociological, anthropological, and many other theoretical approaches to the marriage question from 1630 to the present. As it turns out, sex, marriage, and the family have never been stable institutions; to the contrary, they have continued to function as flash points for the very social and cultural questions that are central to gender studies scholarship.

How do we define Public Art? This course focuses on the production of projects for public places. Public Art is a concept that is in constant discussion and revision, as much as the evolution and transformation of public spaces and cities are. Monuments are repositories of memory and historical presences with the expectation of being permanent. Public interventions are created not to impose and be temporary, but as forms intended to activate discourse and discussion. Considering the concept of a museum as a public device and how they are searching for new ways of avoiding generic identities, we will deal with the concept of the personal imaginary museum. It should be considered as a point of departure to propose a personal individual construction based on the concept of defining a personal imaginary museum - concept, program, collection, events, architecture, public diffusion, etc.

This course surveys techniques to fabricate and analyze submicron and nanometer structures, with applications. Optical and electron microscopy is reviewed. Additional topics that are covered include: surface characterization, preparation, and measurement techniques, resist technology, optical projection, interferometric, X-ray, ion, and electron lithography; Aqueous, ion, and plasma etching techniques; lift-off and electroplating; and ion implantation. Applications in microelectronics, microphotonics, information storage, and nanotechnology will also be explored.

Acknowledgements

The Instructors would like to thank Bob Barsotti, Bryan Cord, and Ben Wunsch for their work on the Atomic Force Microscope video. They would also like to thank Bryan Cord for creating each video.

This course focuses on one important engineering application of superconductors -- the generation of large-scale and intense magnetic fields. It includes a review of electromagnetic theory; detailed treatment of magnet design and operational issues, including "usable" superconductors, field and stress analyses, magnet instabilities, ac losses and mechanical disturbances, quench and protection, experimental techniques, and cryogenics. The course also examines new high-temperature superconductors for magnets, as well as design and operational issues at high temperatures.

15.762J Supply Chain Planning focuses on effective supply chain strategies for companies that operate globally, with an emphasis on how to plan and integrate supply chain components into a coordinated system. Students are exposed to concepts and models important in supply chain planning with emphasis on key tradeoffs and phenomena. The course introduces and utilizes key tactics such as risk pooling and inventory placement, integrated planning and collaboration, and information sharing. Lectures, computer exercises, and case discussions introduce various models and methods for supply chain analysis and optimization.

The course offers an introduction to quantitative analysis of geomorphic processes, and examines the interaction of climate, tectonics, and surface processes in the sculpting of Earth's surface.

The course offers an introduction to quantitative analysis of geomorphic processes, and examines the interaction of climate, tectonics, and surface processes in the sculpting of Earth's surface.

This workshop investigates the current state of sustainability in regards to architecture, from the level of the tectonic detail to the urban environment. Current research and case studies will be investigated, and students will propose their own solutions as part of the final project.