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MIT Introductory EE Goes Hands-On
pioneer writes "MIT is looking to replace its introductory core EE (electrical engineering) curriculum with more hands-on classes. MIT Professors Abelson and Sussman discuss the new class, which replaces equations with actual circuit building, tours of electrical plants, and classes taught by famous professors."
This is an excellent idea. As a recent student I can attest that most students don't understand anything of what goes on in their first circuts class. A hands on approach of building circuits would really help. (All of my second tier electrical engineering classes included a lab where we really saw how things worked).
I do security
Jack (the professor) said that one of his greatest fears as a new parent was that his child would stab a knife or scissors into an electrical socket. While the kid was an infant the situation was manageable, but eventually the kid was big enough to work around the little plastic plugs and other baby protectors.
So Jack rigged up a wall socket so that it was hooked to a battery instead of the house current. Then he gave the kid a knife and told him to stick the knife into the wall socket. The kid did as he was told and received the mildest of electric shocks. Thereafter the child had a healthy fear of electrical sockets.
Miko O'Sullivan
I thought it was normal to actually *build* circuits in electrical engineering since my school required it. It wasn't until after graduation that I talked to other recent graduates and found out that my school had been the exception and not the rule. It certainly helped me get a job when I could refer to specific problems I had designing and building say, a 100W audio amplifier (just one of many projects), rather than just talking about the theoretical aspects of such a design. I also discovered that my school held a high reputation in industry because of this. Unfortunately, due to budget cuts and a the retirement of a few key professors, it looks like they will (or possibly already have) abandoned many of these hands-on labs.
You might be surprised. In my Advanced Placement biology class this year, I used a microscope exactly twice: I used a dissecting scope in a lab to sort fruit flies, and I looked at a plant leaf for fun under a slide microscope on one of the last days of class.
:) on that one for-fun day than I did the entire time I was learning the names and locations of all the parts. It was really a little disheartening, and I have no idea why we didn't even look at them when we were studying them, since it made it so much more understandable. I wasn't even sure you *could* see individual cells with a light microscope. And I must say I had a blast examining them, watching the chloroplasts circle around the cell, and looking at the different layers.
I learned more about plant cells (and paramecia
Theory is great, but seeing is believing.
I got my EE degree from Boise State University, hardly the technological powerhouse of MIT's caliber, but one thing that concerned the faculty in the College of Engineering was the need to not just attract students who wanted to major in engineering, but also to retain them once they started the program.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist (or an engineer) to realize that two years of core engineering classes full of theory, math and seemingly non-applicable ideas is pretty damn boring to an awful lot of people. Although you may disagree, I think that it is not just important, but critical to see some sort of practical engineering examples. Sure, I got a lab with my physics class (I made a telescope, charted magnetic flux lines and measured acceleration, etc.) and there was a chemistry lab (oh boy, we made Slime). There was even a rudimentary circuits lab that taught us something about discrete passive devices. But the one class that was the "hook" that worked to cause most of the borderline (as in not sure if they want to continue in engineering) students to keep on was the Introduction to Engineering course.
This was a course that featured a topic from a different engineering discipline each week: Electrical, Civil and Mechanical. The one hour lecture by a different professor from the field each week was followed by two three hour labs of projects related to that topic.
Sure, we were just taking Calculus I at the time and no, we didn't know Kirchoff's laws. We couldn't describe a system with differential equations, but there are a ton of things that a student can do that involve intuitive engineering knowledge that don't require any more science than simply understanding how something works - not why it works...that comes later.
At the end of the semester, the "capstone" project was, as I recall, a car that had to navigate away from obstacles using IR sensors. Yes, a lot of stuff was prepackaged, but the experience was valuable in that it showed the application of ideas and served as a way to tide us over those first couple of years when hours of math, physics and chemistry threatened to send us all screaming down the halls.
I should point out that, at least at Boise State, the College of Engineering has a very high graduation rate. I don't recall any EE student who started their freshman year with me who didn't go all the way to the end and graduate. Obviously there is a lot that goes into a high graduation rate, including the dedication and determination of the student as well as the quality and committment of the professors, but it seems to me that something works at BSU.
Also, every one of those graduates who took the Fundamentals exam (a prerequisite for becoming a Professional Engineer) passed. Did EE120 make the difference? I can't say, but I do know that it was one of the courses that I took that really sticks in my mind because it showed early on that the things that we were learning and were going to learn had practical applications.
-h-
Thank goodness.
6.002 was one of my least favorite classes (I ultimately went 6.3, the comp-sci variant of the CS/EE degree at MIT) because, well, it's so disconnected from reality. I've found almost zero utility out of it. The other "core" 6-double-oh classes (6.003 = signals, 6.004 = build a simple computer) are vastly, vastly, more useful.
An overdue change, if you ask me.
-- Rob "Xemu" Fermier
We had to identify a mystery cobalt compound and write up a 30 page document explaining how we knew we were right (or in some people's cases, why they still didn't know).
I should have gone to Boise State!
paintball
In defense of the curriculum for your optics course, understanding the electromagnetic theory of light is vital for understanding the intersection of electronics and optics (fiber optic communication, lasers, photosensors, etc). In most of these equations, many of the same approaches used to analyze microwave and radio can be used, it's just that the wavelength is much shorter. In the case of photolithography, electromagnetic wave theory is needed to determine the resolution of an imaging system like a projection system for photolithography, which in turn limits the feature size. The theory behind this is directly analogous to the theory explaining the resolution limits of radar. To be honest, ABCD matrices and lens equations and such don't really need that much coverage--maybe a week or two of lecture and a problem set or two to get familiar with using them. If you ever need to use the ABCD matrices or lens equations, you can always look them up.
If you really want to learn lens design or otherwise specialize in optics should go to schools like my alma mater or possibly our intellectual rival.
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
You can always tell the engineers with no practical hands-on experience. Its not just the inability to solder, drill, or read color codes, but complete lack of clue about components in general.
Like the circuit I once was told to build which had a few 1.2 MegaFarad capacitors sprinkled throughout. I put together a proposal to purchase futures in capacitors to ensure delivery of the whole output of all component manufacturers for the next few decades, so that we would eventually be able to build a single one of our own 1.2MF caps in a large warehouse. The engineer eventually got the point, and went back to his spice simulations and left us to do our jobs. The weird thing is that his spice sim of the circuit was correct, his design was so screwey he needed 1.2MF caps in a few places, it wasn't just a slipped decimal point.
However, I now have a few aerogel caps, 10 Farads or so, but limited to 5.8V breakdown voltage. Great fun to charge for a day and discharge in a few seconds. 4 of them will run a GSM mobile phone for about 2.5 minutes.
The ability to solder a project together, mold plastic, drill holes, etch circuit boards, and certify the result with the FCC/TUV/ART should be a minimum requirement of all EE programs before handing out the certificate.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
My school was all theory no application. As a result I had to go invent projects on my own and figure out how to build them. Some smoked, some worked. After doing enough I managed to get a reasonable background in practical engineering. Not as good as those who had actual engieners teaching actual hardware design classes, but better than nothing.
In the end I got the job, the other EEs are getting laid off from bank IT jobs since they have an EE degree instead of an MCSE but can't do real EE.
Unfortunately the problem is that ACADEMICS teach university classes. ACADEMICS do not care about "real life" by definition. Hence it's all theory. My advice to students is to bear with it, remember that 95% of the theory you will never ever use directly, so don't be discouraged. It's all about how to THINK about the problem, you will rarely if ever actually apply this math, but you should understand the concepts. Then go figure out how to build a small simple device you think you need around your house (like an audio amplifier, SPDIF switch etc.). Don't try to build it all yourself, find all the ICs you need, then figure out how to make them work together. Figure out how to wire up and program a DSP, uC, uP etc.