Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 1 session / week, 1.5 hours / session

Course Summary

My goals for this seminar include:

1. teaching you some interesting things about magnets and their many uses in science and technology,
2. exposing you to glimpses of the wide range of research that goes on in various departments at MIT,
3. creating a friendly and low-pressure small-group environment, and
4. giving you a little practice in oral and written communication.

You get 6 academic credits for the seminar, but I suspect your 12-credit courses consume more than twice as much time each week as the seminar. (That's OK, but I do want you to learn something from the seminar!) In your other courses, the exams provide ample pressure to motivate you to study and learn the material, but the seminar has no exams. The only assigned "homework" to motivate study is seven short writing assignments and one oral presentation. (I gather some freshman seminars assign more homework, some assign less.) To try to maintain interest, I cover many different topics rather than a few in great depth.

Textbook

Livingston, J. D. Driving Force: The Natural Magic of Magnets. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780674216457.

Readings in Driving Force will be supplemented by other articles and handouts distributed in class.

Course Calendar

The following table summarizes the topics covered in each class session.