Open course ware

STEPHEN CARPENTER: We think about conventional activities to expand thematic and conceptual exploration. So the traditional ways or maybe more conventional ways you might think about art education or learning studio practices-- sculpture, working with clay, working with wood, working with paint, or drawing practices-- those are fine if we want to develop a set of skills. But what about thinking about concepts and themes and issues? Well, we might as well get started and do some of that now. So we're going to make a little transition. I'm going to set up a still life over here. And we're going to do some drawing. The range of ways in which people draw is perfectly acceptable, perfectly acceptable. So if you're concerned that it's tough for you to draw a conclusion or draw a straight line, don't be concerned by that. It's the process that we're interested in, not the visual representation. We have the three chairs in the center. With your mar...

We have to talk about composition of your images but it's very difficult to separate the idea of composition and point of view, background. And even lighting, they all go together. When you adjust your light -- you'll see later -- you're going to get a different kind of shadow and that shadow becomes part of the composition. So, we've attempted to separate them into three categories, but really they are very closely connected and it's something to keep in mind. So let's start with these leaves, these autumn leaves that I put on a light box, which you will see more of when we talk about light. In fact the light box itself is an important compositional element in this image because it's giving us a very strong negative space between the leaves. And, it could be an interesting thing to play around with, using the background as part of your composition. Something to think about. Taking a look at these crystals, which I just randomly placed on a bac...

PROFESSOR: So let's talk about the transfer of respiratory pathogens, and in particular, contagious pathogens such as viruses and bacteria, that infect the respiratory system. The way that such pathogens are normally transferred is through droplets which are emitted by respiration, which could be by just normal breathing, coughing, sneezing, et cetera. And so here is a sketch of an infected person who is undergoing respiration and is emitting droplets into the air. And so let's think about what is the fate of those droplets, what it could be. So one possibility is if the droplets are very heavy, they're just going to settle to the ground. And then they may collect on the ground or on some other surface. And then somebody else could touch that surface and transmit it, perhaps by touching their eyes or some other-- or their nose or some bodily entrance point. And that sort of transmission is called fomite transmission. So these dried up bits of droplets on the s...

DAVI THORBURN: In thinking about how the course has to evolve given the availability of all this new technology, one thing I've especially thought about-- worried about, actually-- is how much of my own lecture material, which I now have on video to make available to them, as against my live performance, and whether my live performance is even necessary at all. How does it differ from-- and I still haven't worked that out. For two semesters now, I have taught the course with a combination of live lectures and video lectures. And I've asked the students to tell me in commentaries whether they saw much difference, and whether they preferred one to the other, or whether they had strong feelings. And so far, the testimony has been, meh. They don't seem too interested in the question, which makes me a little nervous, actually. So my feeling is that it's still an open question. One thing I definitely have decided I will be able to do with this video material...

We're talking today about the changes in the corporation and, particularly, about the role that CEOs play in leading American corporations. We're fortunate to have John Reed with us. John is the former chairman of Citicorp and Citibank, and then after Citicorp merged with Travelers, he was the co-CEO of the Citigroup. Then, as an indication of the level of respect the business community has for him, he was asked to serve as chairman of the New York Stock Exchange from 2003 to 2005. So John, thank you for joining us. Maybe, we could start just by getting your perspective on what is the role of the corporation in the American economy, and, particularly, the responsibilities of the CEO. The role of the corporation in the US has changed quite a bit, and I've witnessed some of this change. My own personal view is businesses' responsibility is to create customers, satisfy the customer needs, and do so in a way that produces decent financial results on an interme...

STUDENT: Let's talk about the Mohr's Circle, an important tool in materials science and mechanical engineering. What is Mohr's Circle, and what does it do? Assume you have a rod, and you want to break it with your hands. What can you do about it? You can pull it, compress it, or twist it. Each of these will induce a stress in the rod in a different way. And the Mohr's Circle helps you analyze this. Mohr's Circle is a graphical tool, a visual way to see how to go from one state of stress to another. Usually you are given a state of stress that you calculated from using stress equations. Then you want to find a state of stress at a new angle of orientation, or principal stresses at that orientation, or the maximum in-plane shear stresses. And Mohr's Circle allows you to draw this representative element to visualize the calculations for you. Now, let's derive the Mohr's Circle. So now we take a look at the piece of material that we cut from th...

I want to talk about the six myths that people have about entrepreneurs which are not only not true but not helpful and as we think about this and think in looking through as the how we're going to educate you to be an entrepreneur it's important to understand these six myths are not true first of all entrepreneurs are the smartest most high achieving people in the room this is a myth that you the perpetuated by entrepreneurs themselves I think sometimes and they're rewriting history most of the entrepreneurs I know are not the Val victorians of their class in fact it's very rare they are entrepreneurs are not looking to please other people they are in fact trying to figure out what they really think they're they have passionate about and then they kind of reject everything else so they're more likely to get A+ in one class and not go to the other classes in fact they often even that that's one of the reasons why they often drop out of school t...

Our discussion about the future of the workforce would not be complete without an exploration of what impact the current innovations in technology will have, specifically, artificial intelligence. Over the past three years, there have been significant innovations in big data, database architecture, and artificial intelligence, that are enabling new business models and products. In simplest terms, the innovations in artificial intelligence are equipping algorithms to make smarter decisions about tasks and problems that have, so far, been thought only to be reserved for humans. The accompanying innovations, and cheapening of hardware, that enables artificial intelligence algorithms to read and process incredibly large data sets, has motivated more entrepreneurs, and technologists, to innovate with artificial intelligence. Many think that the implications for the workplace will hurt workers. Similar to how the Industrial Revolution displaced many workers through the creation...

PROFESSOR: Any questions about where we left off-- up to where we left off? OK, what I'll do then is give you a few more examples of the combinations in 22 to show which ones we have to retain as frameworks for crystallographic point groups and which ones exist as groups but which involve rotational symmetries that are not permitted to a lattice. So we've seen a combination of three orthogonal twofold axes and then projection that would look like this. And the international symbol for that point group is just a running list of the different axes that are present, 222. The next group in the sequence would be 3 2 2, where we took a 120 degree rotation. We combine that with a twofold axis perpendicular to it and the new twofold axis comes out and reminds you again of things that are quite clear but which are easy to forget-- that this angle here is 1/2 of 2 pi over 3. Don't forget that 1/2. So the neighboring twofold axis is 60 degrees away and then if we allow t...

PROFESSOR: I think it's about five after the hour so we ought to get started. Before we forge bravely ahead, I'd like to make sure that everybody has a copy of the things that we've been handing out. There is a copy of the handwritten notes on the derivation of the 17 plane groups. Need a copy of that? There you go. And then there is, in addition, a set of diagrams from the international tables that give very nice pictures of all of the plane groups in the arrangement of symmetry elements. That's the only other thing that was handed out up to this point. For your continued edification and amusement, I have another problem set. And let me say something about this problem set. The first problem gives you some angles between crystal faces and asks you to deduce a possible set of lattice translations which are consistent with those angles. And in the days before diffraction, that was what crystallography was all about. It really was mapping the geometry of cry...