This course uses the theory and application of atomistic computer simulations to model, understand, and predict the properties of real materials. Specific topics include: energy models from classical potentials to first-principles approaches; density functional theory and the total-energy pseudopotential method; errors and accuracy of quantitative predictions: thermodynamic ensembles, Monte Carlo sampling and molecular dynamics simulations; free energy and phase transitions; fluctuations and transport properties; and coarse-graining approaches and mesoscale models. The course employs case studies from industrial applications of advanced materials to nanotechnology. Several laboratories will give students direct experience with simulations of classical force fields, electronic-structure approaches, molecular dynamics, and Monte Carlo.
This course was also taught as part of the Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA) programme as course number SMA 5107 (Atomistic Computer Modeling of Materials).
Acknowledgements
Support for this course has come from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Materials Research (grant DMR-0304019) and from the Singapore-MIT Alliance.

This course focuses on novels and films from the last twenty-five years (nominally 1985–2010) marked by their relationship to extreme violence and transgression. Our texts will focus on serial killers, torture, rape, and brutality, but they also explore notions of American history, gender and sexuality, and reality television—sometimes, they delve into love or time or the redemptive role of art in late modernity. Our works are a motley assortment, with origins in the U.S., France, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Japan and South Korea. The broad global era marked by this period is one of acceleration, fragmentation, and late capitalism; however, we will also consider national specificities of violent representation, including particulars like the history of racism in the United States, the role of politeness in bourgeois Austrian culture, and the effect of Japanese manga on vividly graphic contemporary Asian cinema.
We will explore the politics and aesthetics of the extreme; affective questions about sensation, fear, disgust, and shock; and problems of torture, pain, and the unrepresentable. We will ask whether these texts help us understand violence, or whether they frame violence as something that resists comprehension; we will consider whether form mitigates or colludes with violence. Finally, we will continually press on the central term in the title of this course: what, specifically, is violence? (Can we only speak of plural “violences”?) Is violence the same as force? Do we know violence when we see it? Is it something knowable or does it resist or even destroy knowledge? Is violence a matter for a text’s content—who does what, how, and to whom—or is it a problem of form: shock, boredom, repetition, indeterminacy, blankness? Can we speak of an aesthetic of violence? A politics or ethics of violence? Note the question that titles our last week: Is it the case that we are what we see? If so, what does our obsession with ultraviolence mean, and how does contemporary representation turn an accusing gaze back at us?

This Freshman Advising Seminar surveys the many applications of magnets and magnetism. To the Chinese and Greeks of ancient times, the attractive and repulsive forces between magnets must have seemed magical indeed. Through the ages, miraculous curative powers have been attributed to magnets, and magnets have been used by illusionists to produce “magical” effects. Magnets guided ships in the Age of Exploration and generated the electrical industry in the 19th century. Today they store information and entertainment on disks and tapes, and produce sound in speakers, images on TV screens, rotation in motors, and levitation in high-speed trains. Students visit various MIT projects related to magnets (including superconducting electromagnets) and read about and discuss the history, legends, pseudoscience, science, and technology of types of magnets, including applications in medicine. Several short written reports and at least one oral presentation will be required of each participant.

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.

This course provides a challenging introduction to some of the central ideas of theoretical computer science. Beginning in antiquity, the course will progress through finite automata, circuits and decision trees, Turing machines and computability, efficient algorithms and reducibility, the P versus NP problem, NP-completeness, the power of randomness, cryptography and one-way functions, computational learning theory, and quantum computing. It examines the classes of problems that can and cannot be solved by various kinds of machines. It tries to explain the key differences between computational models that affect their power.

6.345 introduces students to the rapidly developing field of automatic speech recognition. Its content is divided into three parts. Part I deals with background material in the acoustic theory of speech production, acoustic-phonetics, and signal representation. Part II describes algorithmic aspects of speech recognition systems including pattern classification, search algorithms, stochastic modelling, and language modelling techniques. Part III compares and contrasts the various approaches to speech recognition, and describes advanced techniques used for acoustic-phonetic modelling, robust speech recognition, speaker adaptation, processing paralinguistic information, speech understanding, and multimodal processing.

6.270 is a hands-on, learn-by-doing class, in which participants design and build a robot that will play in a competition at the end of January. The goal for the students is to design a machine that will be able to navigate its way around the playing surface, recognize other opponents, and manipulate game objects. Unlike the machines in Design and Manufacturing I (2.007), 6.270 robots are totally autonomous, so once a round begins, there is no human intervention.
The goal of 6.270 is to teach students about robotic design by giving them the hardware, software, and information they need to design, build, and debug their own robot. The subject includes concepts and applications that are related to various MIT classes (e.g. 6.001, 6.002, 6.004, and 2.007), though there are no formal prerequisites for 6.270.

This class offers a foundation in the visual art practice and its critical analysis for beginning architecture students. Emphasis is on long-range artistic development and its analogies to architectural thinking and practice. Students will learn to communicate ideas and experiences through various two-dimensional, and three-dimensional, and time-based media, including installations, performance and video. Lectures, visiting artist presentations, field trips, and readings supplement studio practice.

This course provides students with a basic knowledge of structural analysis and design for buildings, bridges and other structures. The course emphasizes the historical development of structural form and the evolution of structural design knowledge, from Gothic cathedrals to long span suspension bridges. Students will investigate the behavior of structural systems and elements through design exercises, case studies, and load testing of models. Students will design structures using timber, masonry, steel, and concrete and will gain an appreciation of the importance of structural design today, with an emphasis on environmental impact of large scale construction.

Childhood is a source of fascination in most Western cultures. It is both a major inspiration for artistic creation and a political ideal, which aims at protecting future generations. Which role does it play in French society and in other francophone areas? Why is the French national anthem (“La Marseillaise”) addressed to its “children”? This course will study the transformation of childhood since the 18th century and the development of sentimentality within the family. We will examine various representations of childhood in literature (e.g. Pagnol, Proust, Sarraute, Laye, Morgièvre), movies (e.g. Truffaut), and songs (e.g. Brel, Barbara). Course taught in French.

This course covers the following questions. What are the predominant heat producing elements of the Earth? Where and how much are they? Are they present in the core of the Earth? Detection of antineutrinos generated in the Earth provides: 1) information on the sources of the terrestrial heat, 2) direct test of the Bulk Silicate Earth (BSE) model and 3) testing of non-conventional models of Earth’s core. Use of antineutrinos to probe the deep interior of our planet is becoming practical due to recent fundamental advances in the antineutrino detectors.

There are now about 170 identified impact craters on the Earth, and this number is growing, ever since the well known discovery of Meteor Crater in 1920s. Currently, multi-interdisciplinary research studies of impact structures are getting conducted in fields like mineralogy, petrology, environmental geology, and marine biology. The course objectives are to introduce basic principles of impact cratering, understand the application of analytical tools, and become familiar with geological, geochemical and environmental studies.
This course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.

This course is conducted as an artificial intelligence programming contest in Java. Students work in teams to program virtual robots to play Battlecode, a real-time strategy game. Optional lectures are provided on topics and programming practices relevant to the game, and students learn and improve their programming skills experientially. The competition culminates in a live Battlecode tournament.
This course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.

This class surveys the music of the Beatles, from the band’s early years to the break-up of the group, mapping how the Beatle’s musical style changed from skiffle and rock to studio-based experimentation. Cultural influences that helped to shape them, as well as the group’s influence worldwide, will be a continuous theme.

This course will present students with an overview of Brazilian popular music, from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Considered an advanced course, it aims to build vocabulary competence and improve oral communication through the study and discussion of topics about cultural aspects and current issues in Brazil. It is designed to give students extensive experience in Portuguese and emphasizes skill development and refinement in the area of critical reading and writing in Portuguese.

Every day, teachers make thousands of decisions: what content to teach, what activities to assign, who to call on, how to respond to a student question, how to react to student behavior. These day-to-day decisions can have an enormous effect on the lives of young people, for good and ill. They can open new doors or cause lasting harm; they can make students feel seen and valued, or dampen their interest in school. In this course, we will investigate these interactions, rehearse responding to difficult scenarios, and develop a set of equity teaching mindsets and practices to support all of our learners, especially underserved students.
With colleagues from your school or organization and online learners around the world, you will participate in four cycles of inquiry, practice, and action, and then complete a final action project. In each cycle of inquiry, you will examine and re-examine dimensions of inequality through educator mindsets, imagine community change through documentary case studies, rehearse taking action in thorny situations through digital practice spaces, and begin to lead change through action-oriented assignments. Our early investigations will focus on relationships and interactions with individual students, and pan out to examine the effects of bias on classrooms, schools, and communities. As you complete activities with peers online, you will develop a rich set of resources and exercises to use with your students and colleagues in your local context.
At the end of the course, you will have a better understanding of yourself and your students, new resources to draw on for helping all students thrive, and a plan to work with your school community to advance the lifelong work of equitable teaching.
This course is part of the Open Learning Library, which is free to use. You have the option to sign up and enroll in the course if you want to track your progress, or you can view and use all the materials without enrolling.

Becoming the Next Bill Nye is about using video production techniques to develop your ability to engagingly convey your passions for science, technology, engineering, and / or math. You’ll have the opportunity to script and on-screen host 5-minute YouTube science, technology, engineering, and / or math-related shows to inspire youth to consider a future in science.

This course surveys Romantic musical genres including song, choral music, opera, piano sonata, character cycle, concerto, symphony, and symphonic poem, including the composers Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz, Chopin, Brahms, Wagner, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, and Mahler. Written essays and oral presentations are based on live performances as well as listening and reading assignments.

This is an intermediate workshop designed for students who have a basic understanding of the principles of theatrical design and who want a more intensive study of costume design and the psychology of clothing. Students develop designs that emerge through a process of character analysis, based on the script and directorial concept. Period research, design, and rendering skills are fostered through practical exercises. Instruction in basic costume construction, including drafting and draping, provide tools for students to produce final projects.

This course is a study of Behavior of Algorithms and covers an area of current interest in theoretical computer science. The topics vary from term to term. During this term, we discuss rigorous approaches to explaining the typical performance of algorithms with a focus on the following approaches: smoothed analysis, condition numbers/parametric analysis, and subclassing inputs.