Want to learn more about Engineering?...

[SidDithers]

or Math, Physics, or a bunch of other topics?

MIT has now published online all of their courses, each with syllabus, lecture notes, homework assignments and exams. All for free, no registration required.

They're part of something called the OpenCourseWare Consortium. MIT is here: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/index.htm

I saw this posted in LBN, but thought it was so cool, it deserved it's own post down here.

Sid

[Kingshakabobo]

1. Cool!

I want to learn how to make steel combustible fire logs.

My business plan is to convert scrap metal in to valuable firewood. @ 200 bucks for a half chord for the real stuff, I figure I can't go wrong!

[dailykoff]

2. When they post the $100+ course textbooks for free,

let us know. This is all well and good but instructors have been posting "course materials such as syllabi, video or audio lectures, notes, homework assignments, illustrations, and so on" for years.

[salvorhardin]

3. On textbooks

Textbook prices are indeed a problem, but nothing says you have to use exactly the same textbooks used by MIT's profs. Often you can find a slightly older edition of the same textbook, or an equivalent text via used/out of print booksellers for a fraction of the cost of the new textbook. A good service that will search and return prices from thousands of online book sellers (not just Amazon and B&N but also ABE, Tomfolio, Alibris, etc) is http://bookfinder.com

The syllabi provide a guideline to the information you should be learning for a particular course while the exams and homework allow you to test your own progress. Any video/audio lectures are just icing on the cake. It's true that MIT (and other institutions) aren't doing anything terribly new but at least MIT is concentrating it all in one place and making it easy to find what you're looking for.

[LARED]

4. Interesting view

The course I looked up does not need a book.

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Nuclear-Engineering/22-00JSpring-2006/Syllabus/index.htm

Even if you had to buy your own book, it is quite the deal.

CT'er should take advantage of this opportunity

You can learn basics of mechanics - like Mohr's circle - here for free.

http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Global/9/9D9C48EB-3ED3-47E9-8E5D-

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mechanical-Engineering/2-001Mechanics---Materials-ISpring2003/CourseHome/index.htm

[Bolo Boffin]

5. http://cheapbooks.com

http://cheapbooks.com

[mirandapriestly]

6. You might want to recommend this to

the people at NIST

[dailykoff]

7. Good one.

:rofl:

[SidDithers]

8. It's there for everyone...

but then again, you've already shown how you feel about MIT...

and then some people believe everything they watch as they wipe the drool off their chin and dab at their CNN-glazed eyes. Personally, I don't trust a source that puts a picture of Osama bin laden with a gun and then has a caption reading "Where's Obama?" like CNN did recently, but knock yourself out and hang on their every word. That is where you get your info, that and agencies whose directors have been appointed by the Bush administration and Universities like MIT which are funded by Raytheon, whose name is emblazoned on the "Active Denial" gun which shoots microwave laser beams at people and is expected to be used in crowd control (aka protesters).

Emphasis added.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=121607&mesg_id=131971

No comment is really needed about this one.

Sid

[greyl]

9. Yeah, but who has time for education when we know it all already?

Science, shmience.

[SidDithers]

10. And besides...

those books are so damn expensive!

Sid

[G Hawes]

11. That's very cool

thanks for the link, I see a lot of useful information there.

[tenseconds]

12. Conservation of Momentum

Lets start with the physics law of Conservation of Momentum and apply it to the twin towers' collapses.