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 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 thermal, luminous, and acoustic behavior of buildings, examining the basic scientific principles underlying these phenomena and introducing students to technologies and analysis techniques for designing comfortable indoor environments. Students are challenged to apply these techniques and explore the role light, energy, and sound can play in shaping architecture.

This course focuses on the thermal, luminous, and acoustic behavior of buildings, examining the basic scientific principles underlying these phenomena and introducing students to technologies and analysis techniques for designing comfortable indoor environments. Students are challenged to apply these techniques and explore the role light, energy, and sound can play in shaping architecture.

A great variety of processes affect the surface of the Earth. Topics to be covered are production and movement of surficial materials; soils and soil erosion; precipitation; streams and lakes; groundwater flow; glaciers and their deposits. The course combines aspects of geology, climatology, hydrology, and soil science to present a coherent introduction to the surface of the Earth, with emphasis on both fundamental concepts and practical applications, as a basis for understanding and intelligent management of the Earth’s physical and chemical environment.

Discerning the ethnic and racial dimensions of politics is considered by some indispensable to understanding contemporary world politics. This course seeks to answer fundamental questions about racial and ethnic politics. To begin, what are the bases of ethnic and racial identities? What accounts for political mobilization based upon such identities? What are the political claims and goals of such mobilization and is conflict between groups and/or with government forces inevitable? How do ethnic and racial identities intersect with other identities, such as gender and class, which are themselves the sources of social, political, and economic cleavages? Finally, how are domestic ethnic/racial politics connected to international human rights? To answer these questions, the course begins with an introduction to dominant theoretical approaches to racial and ethnic identity. The course then considers these approaches in light of current events in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the United States.

This course provides an introduction to the atmospheric chemistry involved in climate change, air pollution and biogeochemical cycles using a combination of hands-on laboratory, field studies, and simple computer models. Lectures will be accompanied by field trips to collect air samples for the analysis of gases, aerosols and clouds by the students.

This course provides an introduction to the atmospheric chemistry involved in climate change, air pollution and biogeochemical cycles using a combination of hands-on laboratory, field studies, and simple computer models. Lectures will be accompanied by field trips to collect air samples for the analysis of gases, aerosols and clouds by the students.

Student teams formulate and complete space/earth/ocean exploration-based design projects with weekly milestones. This course introduces core engineering themes, principles, and modes of thinking, and includes exercises in written and oral communication and team building. Specialized learning modules enable teams to focus on the knowledge required to complete their projects, such as machine elements, electronics, design process, visualization and communication. Examples of projects include surveying a lake for millfoil from a remote controlled aircraft, then sending out robotic harvesters to clear the invasive growth; and exploration to search for the evidence of life on a moon of Jupiter, with scientists participating through teleoperation and supervisory control of robots.

Student teams formulate and complete space/earth/ocean exploration-based design projects with weekly milestones. This course introduces core engineering themes, principles, and modes of thinking, and includes exercises in written and oral communication and team building. Specialized learning modules enable teams to focus on the knowledge required to complete their projects, such as machine elements, electronics, design process, visualization and communication. Examples of projects include surveying a lake for millfoil from a remote controlled aircraft, then sending out robotic harvesters to clear the invasive growth; and exploration to search for the evidence of life on a moon of Jupiter, with scientists participating through teleoperation and supervisory control of robots.

This learning video introduces students to the world of Fractal Geometry through the use of difference equations. As a prerequisite to this lesson, students would need two years of high school algebra (comfort with single variable equations) and motivation to learn basic complex arithmetic. Ms. Zager has included a complete introductory tutorial on complex arithmetic with homework assignments downloadable here. Also downloadable are some supplemental challenge problems. Time required to complete the core lesson is approximately one hour, and materials needed include a blackboard/whiteboard as well as space for students to work in small groups. During the in-class portions of this interactive lesson, students will brainstorm on the outcome of the chaos game and practice calculating trajectories of different equations.

In this unit, students explore synthetic media by creating a smartphone app that can speak in different voices by changing the rate and pitch of the speech. Students work in groups to present arguments about the possible future impacts of various types of deepfake media, including ones in commerce and assistive technology as well as those used in crime.

Educators can use this lesson to introduce students to coding, provide a basic understanding of artificial intelligence and machine learning, and prompt students to predict the possible future use and abuse of synthetic media in society.

The aim of this video lesson is to introduce the concept of factorials, and to show students that everyday events in their lives have so much to do with factorials - even if they do not realize it! During this video, students will learn about the large number of ways to arrange people and objects using the mathematical concept of factorials. This video lesson will begin with a story of a family vacation to Pulau Pinang, an island located 330 km from the city of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. In this video, lessons about using factorials are demonstrated through several challenges this family encounters during their vacation. A prerequisite for this lesson is knowledge of the multiplication rule of counting. During the classroom activities, students are asked to carry out collaborative learning challenges in groups of 6. These activities require students to arrange cards to show different factorial arrangements that can be made. The materials needed for this activity are very simple. We only need to provide a few pieces of blank or colored paper for each student. The lesson will take about 40 – 50 minutes to complete.

This six-week summer course teaches basic concepts of corporate financial accounting and reporting. This information is widely used in making investment decisions, corporate and managerial performance assessment, and valuation of firms. Students perform economics-based analysis of accounting information from the viewpoint of the users of accounting information (especially senior managers) rather than the preparer (the accountant). This course is restricted to MIT Sloan Fellows in Innovation and Global Leadership.

This learning video presents an introduction to the Flaws of Averages using three exciting examples: the ''crossing of the river'' example, the ''cookie'' example, and the ''dance class'' example. Averages are often worthwhile representations of a set of data by a single descriptive number. The objective of this module, however, is to simply point out a few pitfalls that could arise if one is not attentive to details when calculating and interpreting averages. The essential prerequisite knowledge for this video lesson is the ability to calculate an average from a set of numbers. During this video lesson, students will learn about three flaws of averages: (1) The average is not always a good description of the actual situation, (2) The function of the average is not always the same as the average of the function, and (3) The average depends on your perspective. To convey these concepts, the students are presented with the three real world examples mentioned above.

This video lesson shows students that math can play a role in understanding how an infectious disease spreads and how it can be controlled. During this lesson, students will see and use both deterministic and probabilistic models and will learn by doing through role-playing exercises. The primary exercises between video segments of this lesson are class-intensive simulation games in which members of the class 'infect' each other under alternative math modeling assumptions about disease progression. Also there is an occasional class discussion and local discussion with nearby classmates.

The goal of this lesson is to assist students to relate the forces acting upon particular objects and the “unseen” resolution of those forces. The video begins with a story line involving Adam, who helps his father in the garden by disposing of a garbage bag of leaves—the very act that involves resolution of forces. This lesson includes embedded video clips, animations, diagrams and inquiry-based experiments where students are required to work collaboratively and answer thought-provoking questions. The experiments will involve the study of the resolution of forces on objects placed on varying planes or on platforms of different angles, using materials that are easily found. Finally, students are required to discuss and apply what they have learned to determine whether it is easier to push or to pull a luggage bag with wheels. The lesson will take about 50 minutes to complete.

This video lesson is an example of ''teaching for understanding'' in lieu of providing students with formulas for determining the height of a dropped (or projected) object at any time during its fall. The concept presented here of creating a chart to organize and analyze data collected in a simple experiment is broadly useful. During the classroom breaks in this video, students will enjoy timing objects in free fall and balls rolling down ramps as a way of learning how to carefully conduct experiments and analyze the results. The beauty of this lesson is the simplicity of using only the time it takes for an object dropped from a measured height to strike the ground. There are no math prerequisites for this lesson and no needed supplies, other than a blackboard and chalk. It can be completed in one 50-60-minute classroom period.

This lesson focuses on the biggest problem faced by any young programmer - i.e. the LOGIC BUILDING required while solving a particular problem. With programming, the solution to a particular problem lies in the head, but one is unable to convert it into a computer program. This is because the thought processes of a human are much faster than the sense of observation. If this thought process could be slowed down, logic to solve a programming problem could be found very easily. This lesson focuses on converting this psychological thought process in a step-by -step logic fashion that a computer program can understand. This lesson is recorded in a kitchen where the basic programming concepts are taught by giving examples from the process of making a mango milk shake. This lesson teaches the 4 following techniques: 1) Swapping two variables by swapping a glass of milk with a glass of crushed ice; 2) Finding max from an array by finding the biggest mango; 3) Sorting an array by arranging the jars; and 4) Understanding the concept of a function, parameters and return type by comparing it with the blender/juicer. The lesson targets those students who know the syntax of programming in any language (C or GWBASIC preferred), but are unable to build the logic for a program. It can be taught in a class of 45 to 50 minutes.

This lesson is also available in Mandarin Chinese.

This course covers fundamentals of thermodynamics, chemistry, and transport applied to energy systems. Topics include analysis of energy conversion and storage in thermal, mechanical, chemical, and electrochemical processes in power and transportation systems, with emphasis on efficiency, performance, and environmental impact. Applications include fuel reforming and alternative fuels, hydrogen, fuel cells and batteries, combustion, catalysis, combined and hybrid power cycles using fossil, nuclear and renewable resources.