Spring Term 2006! by Bryan

1. Buzz.
2. Hit snooze button.
3. Buzz Buzz.
4. Hit snooze button, again.
5. Buzz Buzz Buzz.
6. Hit snooze button, again.
7. Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz.
8. Roommate hits you before you can hit the snooze button.

Maybe if I had one of these, my morning would have been different.

9:30 AM is really too early to have class; unfortunately, all semester I will have to take it like a champ.

So today’s schedule went a little like this today:
9:30 – 11 am: Thermal Fluids Engineering 2
11 am – 12:30 pm: Design and Manufacturing 1
12:30 – 2 pm: Tissue Engineering for Analysis, Prevention, and Treatment of Human Disease

So to tell you the name of the class without telling you more about the class would be a travesty, so here goes:

Thermal Fluids Engineering 2 is the final chapter in the saga of a boy and his trials with energy and entropy. Directed by John Brisson with the support of Jacopo Buongiorno and Gerald Wilson, Bryan will seek to understand the truth behind boiling water and surfing.

Basically, 2.006, will continue discussing topics of entropy and energy as they relate to heat transfer and fluid dynamics.

2.007 will be a fun class. Basically, the goal of the class is to design a robot to accomplish certain tasks. Over the course of the semester, you build a robot that will compete against the rest of your class of 150 people with goals to have Professor Slocum pick you up and run around Johnson Ice Arena with you over his shoulder to declare you winner.

Last year’s competition table was inspired by Simmons Hall. Do you see the resemblance?

This year’s table I think is a lot more simple, but will be an interesting challenge to develop ways to score points.

Finally, today, I had BE.360 which is taught by my UROP advisor, Linda Griffith. Basically, the goal of this class is to introduce us to some of the fundamentals of tissue engineering (biology and equations). Also, this class will introduce the two different directions tissue engineering can go. One direction is where you engineer artificial organs, and the other direction is where you use tissue engineering to develop human models to predict and prevent disease.

Tomorrow I only have 90 minutes of class, I’m STOKED.

Responding to some questions I received about classes:

Shen asked, “So are classes generally 1.5 hours long?”

Shen, it really depends. My observation is that the basic freshman classes are just an hour most of the time. However, most HASS (Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences) are an hour and a half long. Most of the classes that I have now as a junior are an hour and a half long. Actually, this semester, all of them are.

Shen also asked, “And what are some of the classes/teachers you’ve particularly enjoyed?”

This is a pretty hard question to answer, but my favorite class at MIT would have to have been Quantitative Physiology I: Cells and Tissues for the way it really integrated biology and engineering. It was a really interesting class in my opinion because it involved a lot of modelling of processes that the body performs, but not only allowed us a qualitative understanding of the process but a quantitative understanding as well.

As far as my favorite professor at MIT, that prize goes to Arthur Mattuck. I had him my freshman year for calculus, and I must admit when I visited for Campus Preview Weekend, I attended one of his Differential Equations lectures where he got up on a table and kicked a can to demonstrate the concept of frequency in differential equations (this man is in his 70’s I think). I partially chose to come to MIT because of that lecture. He also rides a bike to school, so I give him props for that as well. Needless to say, I think you can understand why I founded the Arthur Mattuck Fan Club on the Facebook.

In a previous iteration of this entry, I promised a music video. Well, here you go. Last night, my fraternity went to serenade the new members of Alpha Chi Omega. I had my boy band moment.