Students use simple household materials, such as PVC piping and compact mirrors, to construct models of laser-based security systems. The protected object (a "mummified troll" or another treasure of your choosing) is placed "on display" in the center of the modeled room and protected by a laser system that utilizes a laser beam reflected off mirrors to trigger a light trip sensor with alarm.

The Halogen Occultation Experiment, HALOE, was designed to carefully monitor hydrogen fluoride and hydrogen chloride, byproducts of CFC destruction in the stratosphere. HALOE operates by observing the absorption of infrared radiation by these molecules against the rising and setting sun .

This course provides an overview of robot mechanisms, dynamics, and intelligent controls. Topics include planar and spatial kinematics, and motion planning; mechanism design for manipulators and mobile robots, multi-rigid-body dynamics, 3D graphic simulation; control design, actuators, and sensors; wireless networking, task modeling, human-machine interface, and embedded software. Weekly laboratories provide experience with servo drives, real-time control, and embedded software. Students will design and fabricate working robotic systems in a group-based term project.

This course provides an overview of robot mechanisms, dynamics, and intelligent controls. Topics include planar and spatial kinematics, and motion planning; mechanism design for manipulators and mobile robots, multi-rigid-body dynamics, 3D graphic simulation; control design, actuators, and sensors; wireless networking, task modeling, human-machine interface, and embedded software. Weekly laboratories provide experience with servo drives, real-time control, and embedded software. Students will design and fabricate working robotic systems in a group-based term project.

Students learn and use the properties of light to solve the following challenge: "A mummified troll was discovered this summer at our school and it has generated lots of interest worldwide. The principal asked us, the technology classes, to design a security system that alerts the police if someone tries to pilfer our prized possession. How can we construct a system that allows visitors to view our artifact during the day, but invisibly protects it at night in a cost-effective way?"

The chemistry of ozone destruction involves very small quantities of stratospheric gases which change rapidly with altitude. UARS is able to determine the altitude variation of these gases by looking at the atmosphere edge on. This is called limb sounding. The Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) measures microwave emission from ozone and chlorine monoxide, a major ozone destroying radical.

MASLab (Mobile Autonomous System Laboratory) is a robotics contest. The contest takes place during MIT's Independent Activities Period and participants earn 6 units of P/F credit and 6 Engineering Design Points. Teams of three to four students have less than a month to build and program sophisticated robots which must explore an unknown playing field and perform a series of tasks. MASLab provides a significantly more difficult robotics problem than many other university-level robotics contests. Although students know the general size, shape, and color of the floors and walls, the students do not know the exact layout of the playing field. In addition, MASLab robots are completely autonomous, or in other words, the robots operate, calculate, and plan without human intervention. Finally, MASLab is one of the few robotics contests in the country to use a vision based robotics problem.

Real time signal processing lab using J-DSP and interfaces to TI DSK and wireless crossbow sensor motes.

Students learn about tsunamis, discovering what causes them and what makes them so dangerous. They learn that engineers design detection and warning equipment, as well as structures that that can survive the strong wave forces. In a hands-on activity, students use a table-top-sized tsunami generator to observe the formation and devastation of a tsunami. They see how a tsunami moves across the ocean and what happens when it reaches a coastline. They make villages of model houses to test how different material types are impacted by the huge waves.

A proper understanding of modern military operations requires a prior understanding of both the material side of war, and the human or organizational side of war. This seminar will break apart selected past, current, and future sea, air, space, and land battlefields into their constituent parts and look at the interaction in each of those warfare areas between existing military doctrine and weapons, sensors, communications, and information processing technologies. It will specifically seek to explore how technological development, whether innovative or stagnant, is influenced in each warfare area by military doctrine.

To understand the solar effects on the ozone layer, UARS was equipped with three instruments to measure the sun. One of them, the Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor, ACRIM, measures the total energy output from the sun.

The Halogen Occultation Experiment, HALOE, was designed to carefully monitor hydrogen fluoride and hydrogen chloride, byproducts of CFC destruction in the stratosphere.

The High Resolution Doppler Interferometer, HRDI, measures winds in both the stratosphere and mesosphere.

Key to understanding the chlorine chemistry in the polar stratosphere is the measurement of polar stratospheric clouds, chlorine monoxide, and the reservoir gas chlorine nitrate. Polar stratospheric clouds are seen by the Improved Stratospheric and Mesospheric Sounder, ISAMS, and chlorine nitrate has been measured by the Cryogen Limb Array Etalon Spectrometer, CLAES. Both ISAMS and CLAES make measurements by looking at infrared emission from cloud particles and trace gases.

The Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) measures microwave emission from ozone and chlorine monoxide, a major ozone destroying radical.

UARS measures the flux of energetic particles from space using the Particle Environment Monitor, PEM. These high energy particles cause ozone depletion at high altitudes by producing nitrogen and hydrogen radicals.

The Solar Ultraviolet Spectral Irradiance Monitor, SUSIM, and the Solar-Stellar Irradiance Comparison Experiment, SOLSTICE, measure the suns ultraviolet radiation.