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Here you see a circuit powered by a battery and connected through a light bulb. This section of the circuit is made from copper foil. We can put a cut into the foil to make this circuit incomplete. Taking advantage of the thermal expansion properties of copper, we can place some candles under the foil to provide enough heat to expand the foil and complete the circuit again! Many materials, like metals, expand when you heat them. But other materials, like polymers, shrink when heated. The macroscopic properties of both of these materials are highly dependent on temperature. The difference in the macroscopic behavior of these two materials is determined by very different microscopic structure. Statistical Mechanics is the method used to describe and predict behavior at the macro-scale based on statistical models of microscopic behavior. The first step to understanding the power of Statistical Mechanics, is to use this method to define and understand temperature in terms of ...

Some of you might want to present what happens over time with your photographs. Other than creating a video, it's usually quite compelling when watching a dynamic phenomena that's true. And if you think about it, all of science is ultimately dynamic, right? Things change over time. We generally assume one has to watch a moving image to see that change. So here, for example, you are seeing something called the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. It's a complicated oscillating reaction that we're observing within a Petri dish. But it's not a video, in the sense that it wasn't taken with a video camera. You're seeing a series of still images that I made and I was privileged to make in professor Zhabotinsky's lab at Brandeis. I took the images 11 seconds apart over a period of five minutes. By the way, I made the images in film, which became slide formats, as you might remember-- or then again, maybe you don't! And you're seeing digital scan...

Suppose you get a text message. Your friend tells you to go to Lobby 7 at MIT to find the gift they left you 7 meters from the center of the lobby. Is that enough information to find the gift right away? As you can see, there are many locations 7 meters from the center of the room. Don't forget that we live in 3 dimensions, so there are actually even more points 7 meters away from the center of the room. Fortunately, in this problem, you can ignore most of them since we don't expect our gift to be hanging in mid air. Distance alone wasn't enough information. It would have been helpful to have both the distance and the direction. This video is part of the Representations video series. Information can be represented in words, through mathematical symbols, graphically, or in 3-D models. Representations are used to develop a deeper and more flexible understanding of objects, systems, and processes. Hi, my name is Dan Hastings and I am Dean of Undergraduate Educati...

If you would have been driving through the hills of Tennessee about 40 miles south of Nashville on I-65 in the 1990s, you would have come across a very curious exit called the Saturn Parkway. And if you would've taken that exit and gone a little farther, you would've come across something called the Donald Ephlin Parkway. That was the entrance to the Saturn Corporation, one of the boldest, most innovative, new experiments in labor management relations and organizations of the past 30 years. So let's take a look at what Saturn was all about and, unfortunately, why it failed. Well, Saturn started in the 1980s when a number of innovative labor and management leaders said, we've got to adjust the way in which we work. General Motors came to Donald Ephlin, who was the vice president of the auto workers union, and said, we can't build a small car in the United States competitively. We've got to outsource that work. Don, in his innovative way, said, well,...

Any time you begin a communication, whether face-to-face, in writing, or over the phone, it's important to think about why you've opened that line of communication, what the goal of your interaction is, and how you're going to deliver your message. In this video, we'll watch 3 segments of a presentation created by MIT students. You will analyze the strategy used to develop the message, and hear how and why the presenters chose this strategy. This video is part of the Communication video series. Successful professional communication begins with the ability to analyze situational variables and make strategic decisions. Hi, my name is Joanne Yates, and I'm a Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management and Deputy Dean in the Sloan School of Management at MIT. After watching this video, you should be able to use a strategic approach in order to communicate effectively. This means that you will be able to Analyze your audience, context and purpose Examine an...

When you put a cold drink on the kitchen counter the counter surface temperature will decrease. But, if the cold drink is removed, the counter will eventually return to room temperature. If instead we place a cup of tea on the counter, the counter temperature rises; but if we remove the cup of tea, the counter top eventually returns to room temperature. We say that the counter at room temperature is a stable equilibrium. In this video, we discuss the world from the perspective of equilibrium and stability, and in particular linear stability. This video is part of the Linearity video series. Many complex systems are modeled or approximated as linear because of the mathematical advantages. All the world is an initial value problem, and the matter merely state variables. However, and less poetically, there are alternative interpretations of physical, and indeed social, systems that can prove very enlightening. The purpose of this video is to introduce you to the framework of...

RANDY GORDON: Well, guys, you have picked the coolest independent activities period class you could ever do at ground school. This is the most awesome thing possible when I saw the course offerings. So kudos to Tina and Phil for teaching this. This is a good, good. Gig. I go by Laz. It's a fighter pilot thing. All fighter pilots have call signs. They're not like what you see in the movies. By the way, Top Gun is the worst movie for any fighter pilot to watch. It's terrible, drives you crazy. No one is called Maverick because they're the most awesome thing on the face of the planet. Never happens that way. You're always named for something silly. So the previous discussion about crew resource management, if you're a single seat, you still have air traffic control, you have other guys, I am living proof that that's 100% true. So I won't get into it too much, but suffice to say, if you know the biblical story of Lazarus, you know a lot about h...