Can law change human behavior to be less environmentally damaging? Law will be examined through case histories including: environmental effects of national security, pesticides, air pollution, consumer products, plastics, parks and protected area management, land use, urban growth and sprawl, public...
This course explores the physical processes that control Earth's atmosphere, ocean, and climate. Quantitative methods for constructing mass and energy budgets. Topics include clouds, rain, severe storms, regional climate, the ozone layer, air pollution, ocean currents and productivity, the seasons, El...
This subject deals primarily with the basic principles to understand the structure and reactivity of organic molecules. Emphasis is on substitution and elimination reactions and chemistry of the carbonyl group. The course also provides an introduction to the chemistry of aromatic compounds.
This course explores the causes, course, and consequences of the American Civil War, from the 1840s to 1877. The primary goal of the course is to understand the multiple meanings of a transforming event in American history. Those meanings may be defined in many ways: national, sectional, racial, constitutional...
This course offers a broad survey of modern European history, from the end of the Thirty Years' War to the aftermath of World War II. Along with the consideration of major events and figures such as the French Revolution and Napoleon, attention will be paid to the experience of ordinary people in times...
Major developments in the political, social, and religious history of western Europe from the accession of Diocletian to the feudal transformation. Topics include the conversion of Europe to Christianity, the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Islam and the Arabs, the "Dark Ages," Charlemagne and...
5.12 is an introduction to organic chemistry, focusing primarily on the basic principles to understand the structure and reactivity of organic molecules. Emphasis is on substitution and elimination reactions and chemistry of the carbonyl group. The course also provides an introduction to the chemistry...
This course is intended to provide an up-to-date introduction to the development of English society between the late fifteenth and the early eighteenth centuries. Particular issues addressed in the lectures will include: the changing social structure; households; local communities; gender roles; economic...
This course covers the emergence of modern France. Topics include the social, economic, and political transformation of France; the impact of France's revolutionary heritage, of industrialization, and of the dislocation wrought by two world wars; and the political response of the Left and the Right to...
This course we will explore the foundations of software security. We will consider important software vulnerabilities and attacks that exploit them -- such as buffer overflows, SQL injection, and session hijacking -- and we will consider defenses that prevent or mitigate these attacks, including advanced...
This survey course introduces students to the important and basic material on human fertility, population growth, the demographic transition and population policy. Topics include: the human and environmental dimensions of population pressure, demographic history, economic and cultural causes of demographic...
This undergraduate course focuses on traditional algebra topics that have found greatest application in science and engineering as well as in mathematics.
This course covers concepts of computation used in analysis of engineering systems. It includes the following topics: data structures, relational database representations of engineering data, algorithms for the solution and optimization of engineering system designs (greedy, dynamic programming, branch...
Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature pairs central texts from Western philosophical tradition (including works by Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Hobbes, Kant, Mill, Rawls and Nozick) with recent findings in cognitive science and related fields. The course is structured around three intertwined sets...
This course provides a thorough introduction to the principles and methods of physics for students who have good preparation in physics and mathematics. Emphasis is placed on problem solving and quantitative reasoning. This course covers Newtonian mechanics, special relativity, gravitation, thermodynamics...
This is a continuation of Fundamentals of Physics, I (PHYS 200), the introductory course on the principles and methods of physics for students who have good preparation in physics and mathematics. This course covers electricity, magnetism, optics and quantum mechanics.
This course is intended as an introduction to political philosophy as seen through an examination of some of the major texts and thinkers of the Western political tradition. Three broad themes that are central to understanding political life are focused upon: the polis experience (Plato, Aristotle),...
This course focuses on how to design and build secure systems with a human-centric focus. We will look at basic principles of human-computer interaction, and apply these insights to the design of secure systems with the goal of developing security measures that respect human performance and their goals...
5.112 is an introductory chemistry course for students with an unusually strong background in chemistry. Knowledge of calculus equivalent to MIT course 18.01 is recommended. Emphasis is on basic principles of atomic and molecular electronic structure, thermodynamics, acid-base and redox equilibria, chemical...