xSeries in Introduction to Mechanics
Learn physics just like an MIT freshman with this calculus-based online series that explores kinematics, momentum, rotational dynamics, and simple harmonic motion.
Program Information
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About this Program
How does motion work? How can we calculate the motion around us?
Introduction to Mechanics is a four-part series of online courses that will take you through the full set of topics covered in the first semester of undergraduate physics at MIT. Mechanics – the study of motion and how it relates to applied forces – lays the foundation for advanced studies in science and engineering, and helps us understand the world around us.
In the first course, you’ll explore the basic kinematic description of motion and the causes of motion – or forces. You’ll also discuss more complex situations, such as a rocket whose mass depends on time, and the tension in a massive rope. Then you’ll learn to use energy, known as kinetic potential, to describe the same physics of motion. Finally, we dive into more complicated topics such as angular momentum, torque, and rotational dynamics. The series ends with a mathematical description of simple harmonic motion which we use to approximate the simple pendulum and other cases where we can approximate the potential function as a quadratic.
This series of courses requires the use of calculus, but many of the concepts will be reviewed as needed.
What you'll learn
- Kinematics
- Forces and Free Body Diagrams
- Circular Motion
- Energy
- Torque and Rotational Dynamics
Courses
To complete this program, you must take 4 required courses.
Required Courses
Prerequisites
High school physics and calculus, for example:
- Calculus 1A: Differentiation
- Calculus 1B: Integration
- Calculus 1C: Coordinate Systems & Infinite Series
Meet your instructors
Krishna Rajagopal
William A. M. Burden Professor of Physics
After growing up in Toronto, Professor Rajagopal did his undergraduate work at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. He obtained his doctorate at Princeton University in 1993 and spent three years at Harvard as a Junior Fellow. He then spent one year at Caltech before coming to MIT in 1997. He became the Associate Head of the Department of Physics in 2009, served as the Chair of the MIT faculty from 2015 to 2017 and as MIT’s Dean for Digital Learning from 2017 to 2021.
Professor Rajagopal has also described the properties of the superfluid, color superconducting, quark matter that may lie at the centers of neutron stars, providing a clear understanding of the properties of matter at extraordinarily high densities. His work shows that cold quark matter at the highest densities is the QCD analogue of a superconductor but that if you could look at it using ordinary light it would look like a transparent insulator.
