This is an archive. See the current website at www.summer.harvard.edu.
This page contains content from the Summer School 2009. For current information, visit the Harvard Summer School website at www.summer.harvard.edu.
PHYS S-1ab
Principles of Physics (30610)
(Website) (Printable version)
Timothy A. French and Sang-Joon Pahk
(8 credits: UN) Mondays-Fridays, 8:45-11:45 am. Required sections Mondays-Fridays, 1-2:30 pm or 3:30-5 pm; required laboratories Tuesdays, Thursdays, 12:30-3 pm, 3:30-6 pm, or 6:30-9 pm.
Tuition $4,950.
This survey of classical physics stresses topics important for life science applications. The first half of the course covers kinematics and dynamics, conservation laws, elasticity, and fluid mechanics. The second half of the course covers electricity and electric circuits, magnetism, waves and optics, and nuclear physics. This course fulfills the requirement of two semesters of physics for entrance to medical school. Prerequisite: good working knowledge of algebra and trigonometry, and acquaintance with differential calculus. (A one-semester high school or college course in calculus should suffice.)
PHYS S-123
Laboratory Electronics: Analog and Digital Circuit Design (30203)
(Printable version)
Jason Richard Gallicchio and Jonathan Weintroub
(8 credits: UN, GR, NC) Mondays-Thursdays, 9 am-1 pm. Tuition $4,950. Limited enrollment.
Harvard College students see additional information.
This course surveys practical electronics, from Ohm's Law through microprocessors, with little mathematical or physical explanation but much opportunity to design and build circuits. Each of the four-hour meetings devotes about two and a half hours to a laboratory session. The small class size allows a format closer to seminar than to ordinary lecture. Since the course aims above all to enable students to design useful circuits, it concentrates on the most effective techniques, analog and digital: operational amplifiers and microprocessors.The analog half of the course moves quickly from fundamentals (resistors, capacitors) to design with transistors, bipolar and field-effect, and the many applications of feedback, using operational amplifiers. The digital half of the course looks briefly at discrete-gate design, then at analog-digital interfacing. Students apply programmable logic devices (PLDs, often called PALs), programming these through a logic compiler (ABEL). Somewhat more than half of the digital content concerns the design of microcomputers, microcontrollers, and their interfaces. The laboratories conclude with a series of seven sessions in which each pair of students constructs and programs a microcomputer. The course is not especially difficult, but it absorbs a great deal of time. Enthusiasts among our students often spend extra hours in the lab beyond the required sessions. Prerequisite: secondary school algebra and, preferably, a course in basic physics.