Examine a collection of primary source documents about trolleys and streetcars in American history.
This class introduces students to the interdisciplinary nature of 21st-century engineering projects with three threads of learning: a technical toolkit, a social science toolkit, and a methodology for problem-based learning. Students encounter the social, political, economic, and technological challenges of engineering practice by participating in real engineering projects with faculty and industry; this semester’s major project focuses on the engineering and economics of solar cells. Student teams will create prototypes and mixed media reports with exercises in project planning, analysis, design, optimization, demonstration, reporting and team building.
This class deals with the modeling and analysis of queueing systems, with applications in communications, manufacturing, computers, call centers, service industries and transportation. Topics include birth-death processes and simple Markovian queues, networks of queues and product form networks, single and multi-server queues, multi-class queueing networks, fluid models, adversarial queueing networks, heavy-traffic theory and diffusion approximations. The course will cover state of the art results which lead to research opportunities.
" This course, offered by the MIT Center for Real Estate, focuses on developing an understanding of the macroeconomic factors that shape and influence markets for real property. We will develop the theory of land markets and locational choice. The material covered includes studies of changing economic activities, demographic trends, transportation and local government behavior as they affect real estate."
In this math meets physics game, learners pretend they are pilots of rescue helicopters and must fly their helicopters to the top of a mountain to rescue lost hikers. Learners first explore the four forces of flight: lift, drag, thrust, and weight. Before playing the game, learners conduct a probability experiment with spinners and record their results in tally tables and bar graphs. They then use their findings to select spinners with the greatest probability of helping them win the game. In a portion of the game, learners use ordered pairs to plot points on the coordinate plane to show their flight path.
Students will view three works of decorative arts and complete the accompanying activities to better understand the Age of Exploration and the Scientific Revolution, and how these "revolutions" and their discoveries influenced the new European world view.
“I love to travel. But I hate the fact that something I love to do, creates so much pollution.” In this episode of TILclimate (Today I Learned: Climate), MIT professor Steven Barrett and host Laur Hesse Fisher dig into how — and why — air travel impacts our earth’s climate, and what solutions are on the horizon. They explore the surprising heating effect of condensation trails (“contrails”), how computer simulations of the earth’s climate system are built, and what scientists and engineers are doing to make flying, well, less bad for the planet.
Hydrogen gas acts like a fossil fuel, but with no carbon emissions. Is it the silver bullet we’ve been waiting for? Prof. Svetlana Ikonnikova of the Technical University of Munich joins us to bring light to how hydrogen works and its potential in the energy transition.
Electric vehicles (EVs) are being touted as a major solution to climate change. But why is that? How do they work and what kinds of changes are needed as more EVs hit the road? To dig into this, we brought in MIT Sloan Prof. David Keith, who studies transportation technology.
Roughly ten percent of the world’s CO2 emissions come from passenger vehicles: cars, pickups, motorcycles, buses, and taxis. So today, we’re going to zoom in on how people across the world get around every day, how that’s quickly changing, and what to consider when thinking about reducing carbon emissions from everyday travel. For this episode, we sat down with our former MIT colleague and transportation expert Dr. Joanna Moody.
In this lesson, students learn about major landforms (e.g., mountains, rivers, plains, valleys, canyons and plateaus) and how they occur on the Earth's surface. They learn about the civil and geotechnical engineering applications of geology and landforms, including the design of transportation systems, mining, mapping and measuring natural hazards.
This course explores the importance of public transportation to social and economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and seeks to identify approaches to restoring transit ridership, with a focus on Metro Boston. We will attempt to (1) understand whether and how the COVID-19 pandemic can advance sustainable mobility, and specifically the role(s) of public transportation in the COVID-19 recovery process, and (2) identify policies and/or interventions that may encourage pre-COVID transit riders to return to transit and attract net new transit ridership.
Subject considers how the visual and material world of "nature" has been reshaped by industrial practices, beliefs, structures, and activities. Readings in historical geography, aesthetics, American history, environmental and ecological history, architecture, city planning, and landscape studies. Several field trips planned to visit local industrial landscapes. Assignments involve weekly short, written responses to the readings, and discussion-leading. Final project is a photo-essay on the student's choice of industrial site (photographic experience not necessary).
A survey of America's transition from a rural, agrarian, and artisan society to one of the world's leading industrial powers. Treats the emergence of industrial capitalism: the rise of the factory system; new forms of power, transport, and communication; the advent of the large industrial corporation; the social relations of production; and the hallmarks of science-based industry. Views technology as part of the larger culture and reveals innovation as a process consisting of a range of possibilities that are chosen or rejected according to the social criteria of the time.
This course provides an introduction to the transportation industry's major technical challenges and considerations. For upper level undergraduates interested in learning about the transportation field in a broad but quantitative manner. Topics include road vehicle engineering, internal combustion engines, batteries and motors, electric and hybrid powertrains, urban and high speed rail transportation, water vessels, aircraft types and aerodynamics, radar, navigation, GPS, GIS. Students will complete a project on a subject of their choosing.
Students learn about traffic lights and their importance in maintaining public safety and order. Using a Parallax® Basic Stamp 2 microcontroller, students work in teams on the engineering challenge to build a traffic light with a specific behavior. In the process, they learn about light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and how their use can save energy. Students also design their own requirements based on real-world observations as they learn about traffic safety and work towards an interesting goal within the realm of what is important in practice. Knowledge gained from the activity is directly transferrable to future activities, and skills learned are scalable to more ambitious class projects.
Looking at transportation and the environment, students learn that some human-made creations, such as vehicles, can harm the environment. They also learn about alternative fuels and vehicles designed by engineers to minimize pollution. The associated hands-on activity gives students a chance to design their own eco-friendly vehicle.
This Guide for Educators was developed by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative as an extension of our TILclimate (Today I Learned: Climate) podcast, to make it easier for you to teach climate change, earth science, and energy topics in the classroom. It is an extension of the TILclimate episode "TIL about everyday travel."
Students apply their knowledge about mountains and rocks to transportation engineering, with the task of developing a model mountain tunnel that simulates the principles behind real-life engineering design. Student teams design and create model tunnels through a clay mountain, working within design constraints and testing for success; the tunnels must meet specific design requirements and withstand a certain load.
The airplanes unit begins with a lesson on how airplanes create lift, which involves a discussion of air pressure and how wings use Bernoulli's principle to change air pressure. Next, students explore the other three forces acting on airplanes thrust, weight and drag. Following these lessons, students learn how airplanes are controlled and use paper airplanes to demonstrate these principles. The final lessons addresses societal and technological impacts that airplanes have had on our world. Students learn about different kinds of airplanes and then design and build their own balsa wood airplanes based on what they have learned.