Lighting is responsible for nearly one-third of the electricity use in buildings. One of the best ways to conserve energy is to make sure the lights are turned off when no one is in a room. This process can be automated using motion sensors. In this activity, students explore material properties as they relate to motion detection, and use that knowledge to make design judgments about what types of motion detectors to use in specific applications.

Survey of principles underlying the structure and function of the nervous system, integrating molecular, cellular, and systems approaches. Topics: development of the nervous system and its connections, cell biology or neurons, neurotransmitters and synaptic transmission, sensory systems of the brain, the neuroendocrine system, the motor system, higher cortical functions, behavioral and cellular analyses of learning and memory. First half of an intensive two-term survey of brain and behavioral studies for first-year graduate students. Open to graduate students in other departments, with permission of instructor.

"This course explores electromagnetic phenomena in modern applications, including wireless and optical communications, circuits, computer interconnects and peripherals, microwave communications and radar, antennas, sensors, micro-electromechanical systems, and power generation and transmission. Fundamentals include quasistatic and dynamic solutions to Maxwell's equations; waves, radiation, and diffraction; coupling to media and structures; guided waves; resonance; acoustic analogs; and forces, power, and energy."

In a hands-on way, students explore light's properties of absorption, reflection, transmission and refraction through various experimental stations within the classroom. To understand absorption, reflection and transmission, they shine flashlights on a number of preselected objects. To understand refraction, students create indoor rainbows. An understanding of the fundamental properties of light is essential to designing an invisible laser security system.

Students are introduced to gear transmissions and gear ratios using LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT robots, gears and software. They discover how gears work and how they can be used to adjust a vehicle's power. Specifically, they learn how to build the transmission part of a vehicle by designing gear trains with different gear ratios. Students quickly recognize that some tasks require vehicle speed while others are more suited for vehicle power. They are introduced to torque, which is a twisting force, and to speed the two traits of all rotating engines, including mobile robots using gears, bicycles and automobiles. Once students learn the principles behind gear ratios, they are put to the test in two simple design activities that illustrate the mechanical advantages of gear ratios. The "robot race" is better suited for a quicker robot while the "robot push" calls for a more powerful robot. A worksheet and post-activity quiz verify that students understand the concepts, including the tradeoff between torque and speed.

Students gain a basic understanding of the engineering components behind telecommunications, in particular, the way telephone communication works to link one phone to another for conventional landline and cellular telephones. During this entire-class activity, students simulate how phone calls are connected by acting out a variety of searches for both local and long-distance calls. Students end up with a good understanding of how phone calls are transmitted from callers to recipients.

Broad coverage of technology concepts underlying modern computing and information management. Topics include computer architecture and operating systems, relational database systems, graphical user interfaces, networks, client/server systems, enterprise applications, cryptography, and the web. Hands-on exposure to internet services, Microsoft Access database management system, and Lotus Notes. Information Technology I helps students understand technical concepts underlying current and future developments in information technology. There will be a special emphasis on networks and distributed computing. Students will also gain some hands-on exposure to powerful, high-level tools for making computers do amazing things, without the need for conventional programming languages. Since 15.564 is an introductory course, no knowledge of how computers work or are programmed is assumed.

This subject investigates the special relation of women to several musical folk traditions in the British Isles and North America. Throughout, we will be examining the implications of gender in the creation, transmission, and performance of music. Because virtually all societies operate to some extent on a gendered division of labor (and of expressive roles) the music of these societies is marked by the gendering of musical repertoires, traditions of instrumentation, performance settings, and styles. This seminar will examine the gendered dimensions of the music -- the song texts, the performance styles, processes of dissemination (collection, literary representation) and issues of historiography -- with respect to selected traditions within the folk musics of North America and the British Isles, with the aim of analyzing the special contributions of women to these traditions. In addition to telling stories about women's musical lives, and studying elements of female identity and subjectivity in song texts and music, we will investigate the ways in which women's work and women's cultural roles have affected the folk traditions of these several countries.

Students learn and use the properties of light to solve the following challenge: "A mummified troll was discovered this summer at our school and it has generated lots of interest worldwide. The principal asked us, the technology classes, to design a security system that alerts the police if someone tries to pilfer our prized possession. How can we construct a system that allows visitors to view our artifact during the day, but invisibly protects it at night in a cost-effective way?"

Students learn the basic properties of light the concepts of light absorption, transmission, reflection and refraction, as well as the behavior of light during interference. Lecture information briefly addresses the electromagnetic spectrum and then provides more in-depth information on visible light. With this knowledge, students better understand lasers and are better prepared to design a security system for the mummified troll.

Students examine various materials to investigate how they interact with light. They use five characteristics—translucency, transparency, opaqueness, reflectivity and refractivity—to describe how light interacts with the objects.

Students determine the refractive index of a liquid with a simple technique using a semi-circular hollow block. Then they predict the refractive index of a material (a Pyrex glass tube) by matching it with the known refractive index of a liquid using the percent light transmission measurement. The homemade light intensity detector uses an LED and multimeter, which are relatively inexpensive (and readily available) compared to commercially available measurement instruments.

This is the first lesson of this unit to introduce light. Lessons 1-5 focus on sound, while 6-9 focus on light. In this lesson, students learn the five words that describe how light interacts with objects: "transparent," "translucent," "opaque," "reflection" and "refraction."

Principles of operation, algorithms, applications, and limitations of optical detection, storage, processing, transmission and display devices and systems. Topics: review of basic properties of electromagnetic waves; holography; spatial light modulator and display devices; thermal and quantum photodetectors; optical storage media such as disks and 3-D holographic materials; fiberoptic communication systems; optical interconnection device technologies; coherent and incoherent light processors based on Fourier optics, Acousto-optics, and optoelectronic neural networks; role of optics in next-generation computers; applications to image processing, pattern recognition, radar systems and adaptive optics; limitations of optical processors.

Using a red laser, students will explore how red, green and clear bears reflect, transmit and absorb light.

Students drip water into a shallow pan of water to observe waves reflecting and absorbing. A block of wood is used for reflecting waves and paper towling is used to absorb waves. 

Students modify a provided App Inventor code to design their own diseases. This serves as the evolution step in the software/systems design process. The activity is essentially a mini design cycle in which students are challenged to design a solution to the modification, implement and test it using different population patterns The result of this process is an evolution of the original app.