This Freshman Advising Seminar surveys the many applications of magnets and magnetism. To the Chinese and Greeks of ancient times, the attractive and repulsive forces between magnets must have seemed magical indeed. Through the ages, miraculous curative powers have been attributed to magnets, and magnets have been used by illusionists to produce "magical" effects. Magnets guided ships in the Age of Exploration and generated the electrical industry in the 19th century. Today they store information and entertainment on disks and tapes, and produce sound in speakers, images on TV screens, rotation in motors, and levitation in high-speed trains. Students visit various MIT projects related to magnets (including superconducting electromagnets) and read about and discuss the history, legends, pseudoscience, science, and technology of types of magnets, including applications in medicine. Several short written reports and at least one oral presentation will be required of each participant.

A summary of common methods used to characterize chemically functionalized single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs).

Practical training in basic chemistry laboratory techniques. Intended to provide freshmen with the skills necessary to undertake original research projects in chemistry. Freshmen only. This course is an intensive introduction to the techniques of experimental chemistry and gives first year students an opportunity to learn and master the basic chemistry lab techniques for carrying out experiments. Students who successfully complete the course and obtain a "Competent Chemist" (CC) or "Expert Experimentalist" (EE) rating are likely to secure opportunities for research work in a chemistry lab at MIT.

Introduction to computational biology including the fundamentals of protein and nucleic acid sequence analysis, phylogenetic analysis, motif finding, hidden Markov models, and 3D structure prediction and modeling. An overview of emerging fields including expression profiling, quantitative image analysis and the modeling of cellular signal transduction networks are also included. Subject designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students with strong backgrounds in either molecular biology or computer science but not necessarily both. Two self-study tracks are offered, introducing either basic statistical methods and programming (to biologists) or the fundamentals of molecular biology (to computer scientists). Lectures combine both perspectives to illustrate how computation is having a significant impact on modern biology. Serving as an introduction to computational biology, this course emphasizes the fundamentals of nucleic acid and protein sequence analysis, structural analysis, and the analysis of complex biological systems. The principles and methods used for sequence alignment, motif finding, structural modeling, structure prediction, and network modeling are covered. Students are also exposed to currently emerging research areas in the fields of computational and systems biology.

X-rays, CT scans and MRI scans are all medical imaging techniques of great practical importance that have been encountered by a great many people in their medical histories. This unit illustrates how these techniques work – and their limitations and advantages.

First term of a three-term laboratory subject sequence for Course V majors. Experimental work emphasizes development of fundamental laboratory skills and techniques: volumetric and colorimetric analysis; nuclear magnetic resonance; preparation, purification, and characterization of chemical substances; and data analysis.

Fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics: wave properties, uncertainty principles, Schrodinger equation, and operator and matrix methods. Basic applications to: one-dimensional potentials (harmonic oscillator), three-dimensional centrosymetric potentials (hydrogen atom), and angular momentum and spin. Approximation methods: WKB method, variational principle, and perturbation theory.

An intensive survey of structure, reactions and synthesis of the main classes of organic compounds. Laboratory illustrates the preparation, purification, and identification of organic compounds by classical and instrumental methods.

Intermediate organic chemistry. Synthesis, structure determination, mechanism, and the relationships between structure and reactivity emphasized. Special topics in organic chemistry included to illustrate the role of organic chemistry in biological systems and in the chemical industry.

This course covers modern and advanced methods of elucidation of the structures of organic molecules, including NMR, MS, and IR (among others). The fundamental physical and chemical principles of each method will be discussed. The major emphasis of this course is on structure determination by way of interpreting the data (generally in the form of a spectrum or spectra) that each method provides.