1 - 10 of 98 results for: EE

Preference to freshmen. The stories behind disruptive inventions such as the telegraph, telephone, wireless, television, transistor, and chip are as important as the inventions themselves, for they elucidate broadly applicable scientific principles. Focus is on studying consumer devices; projects include building batteries, energy conversion devices and semiconductors from pocket change. Students may propose topics and projects of interest to them. The trajectory of the course is determined in large part by the students themselves.

The goal of this seminar is to introduce freshmen to the design process associated with an engineering project. The seminar will consist of a series of lectures. The first part of each lecture will focus on the different design aspects of an engineering project, including formation of the design team, developing a project statement, generating design ideas and specifications, finalizing the design, and reporting the outcome. Students will form teams to follow these procedures in designing a term project of their choice over the quarter. The second part of each lecture will consist of outside speakers, including founders of some of the most exciting companies in Silicon Valley, who will share their experiences about engineering design. On-site visits to Silicon Valley companies to showcase their design processes will also be part of the course. The seminar serves three purposes: (1) it introduces students to the design process of turning an idea into a final design, (2) it presents the different functions that people play in a project, and (3) it gives students a chance to consider what role in a project would be best suited to their interests and skills.

Nanotechnology is an often used word and it means many things to different people. Scientists and Engineers have some notion of what nanotechnology is, societal perception may be entirely different. In this course, we start with the classic paper by Richard Feynman ("There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom"), which laid down the challenge to the nanotechnologists. Then we discuss two classic books that offer a glimpse of what nanotechnology is: Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology by Eric Drexler, and Prey by Michael Crichton. Drexler's thesis sparked the imagination of what nano machinery might do, whereas Crichton's popular novel channeled the public's attention to this subject by portraying a disastrous scenario of a technology gone astray. We will use the scientific knowledge to analyze the assumptions and predictions of these classic works. We will draw upon the latest research advances to illustrate the possibilities and impossibilities of nanotechnology.

Electronics pervades our lives, yet we often feel obliged to let a device function as it was intended. This course is about not being intimidated by voiding a warranty and modding some commercial gadget and about being confident enough to build something cool from scratch. To get there, we will study the basics of "how things work" via "dissection and discussion" and discuss how to hack/mod but focus primarily how to scratch build. Students will be mentored and encouraged to work, in teams, to design and develop a substantial project based on embedded microprocessors and custom circuits as needed. Typical projects include (but are not limited to) microcontrollers such as the Arduino, LED's, sensors, wireless connections to the network or a laptop, and software/firmware as needed. Examples include programmable, color-changing wireless juggling balls, a self-healing mesh-networked hide-and-seek game, and a glowing plasma based clock built from surplus Soviet vacuum tubes and a modern microprocessor. Prerequisites: good hand-eye coordination, intelligence, teamwork skills, curiosity and humility.

Preference to freshman. Natural hazards, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, hurricanes, and fires, and how they affect people and society; great disasters such as asteroid impacts that periodically obliterate many species of life. Scientific issues, political and social consequences, costs of disaster mitigation, and how scientific knowledge affects policy. How spaceborne imaging technology makes it possible to respond quickly and mitigate consequences; how it is applied to natural disasters; and remote sensing data manipulation and analysis. GER:DB-EngrAppSci

Lectures/discussions on topics of importance to the electrical engineering professional. Continuing education, professional societies, intellectual property and patents, ethics, entrepreneurial engineering, and engineering management.

First of two-course sequence. Introduction to circuit modeling and analysis. Topics include creating the models of typical components in electronic circuits and simplifying non-linear models for restricted ranges of operation (small signal model); and using network theory to solve linear and non-linear circuits under static and dynamic operations. Prerequisite: ENGR40 or ENGR40M is useful but not strictly required.

Concepts and tools for continuous- and discrete-time signal and system analysis with applications in signal processing, communications, and control. Mathematical representation of signals and systems. Linearity and time invariance. System impulse and step responses. System frequency response. Frequency-domain representations: Fourier series and Fourier transforms. Filtering and signal distortion. Time/frequency sampling and interpolation. Continuous-discrete-time signal conversion and quantization. Discrete-time signal processing. Prerequisite: MATH 53 or CME 102.

Introduction to applied linear algebra with emphasis on applications. Vectors, norm, and angle; linear independence and orthonormal sets. Matrices, left and right inverses, QR factorization. Least- squares and model fitting, regularization and cross-validation, time-series prediction, and other examples. Constrained least-squares; applications to least-norm reconstruction, optimal control, and portfolio optimization. Newton methods and nonlinear least-squares. Prerequisites: MATH 51 or CME 100.