MAS 960 Special
Topics:
How To Make Something That Makes (almost) Anything Neil Gershenfeld and Joe Jacobson Mondays 1:00-4:00 E15-135 This will be an experimental second-semester fab class covering rapid-prototyping of rapid-prototyping machines to be developed by the class, supported by a review of digital fabrication research, and a weekly section on computation in physical systems (taught by Ben Vigoda and Yael Maguire, based on a text they're writing). Enrollment is by permission of the instructors; the procedure will be discussed at the first class. Tentative agenda: Mon 2/12/07: introduction, fabricational complexity section: computational complexity Tue 2/20/07: self-, coded, algorithmic assembly section: error correction, threshold theorems, and fault tolerance Mon 2/26/07: CAD, CAM formats and algorithms section: universal computation Mon 3/05/07: materials characterization and testing (George Popescu) guest lecture: printing functional systems (Hod Lipson) section: ultimate limits, scaling Mon 3/12/07: finite difference, finite element, lattice gas physical modeling section: automata and dynamics Mon 3/19/07: subtractive fabrication processes guest lecture: machine design (Alex Slocum) section: gates, operators, algorithms Mon 4/02/07: additive fabrication processes guest lecture (Yong Chen): 3D printing guest lecture (Berok Khoshnevis): building printing section: functional approximation Mon 4/09/07: digital materials George Popescu, Hod Lipson, Ara Knaian motors, actuators, and motion control section: coding and compression Mon 4/23/07: embedded networks and distributed systems section: constrained optimization Mon 4/30/07: control theory section: statistical inference Mon 5/07/07: protein synthesis guest lecture (Erik Winfree): DNA assembly section: statistical mechanics Mon 5/14/07: nanofabrication section: quantum information and computation Mon 5/21/07: final project presentations |