Difference between revisions of "6.002"

Revision as of 14:54, 28 July 2008

There's a reason why 6.002 doesn't have "Introduction to..." in its title. It's a deceptively easy-sounding class (it's the first thing you do in Circuits! How hard can it be?) but it's easy to be caught off-guard by the pace of the class. Nevertheless, if you pay attention, don't skip a lot of lectures (or at least don't miss getting lecture notes), and keep on track, it's not insurmountable. It's fast and assumes you can keep up; it requires a thorough knowledge of 18.03, as the end of it involves Laplace transforms and first/second order homogeneous/inhomogeneous differential equations.

The course covers a large number of topics, but its main topics are basic circuit analysis (through node method, Norton/Thévenin conversion, and superposition), MOSFET transistors (everything you ever wanted to know about them and more), small- and large-signal analysis, transfer functions, and op-amps (operational amplifiers). It's essential for Course 6 as a major, unless you're on the new track, and then it's replaced by 6.01 and 6.02. Course 6-1 should know it well; for 6-3, it's not so necessary to know it clearly.

More than a few times, the TAs for this class aren't on the ball and are inconsistent. They will often give students different answers as to what is on the upcoming exam, so make sure you double-check all of that, possibly with the professor. If pset dates on the main syllabus clash with the ones on the pset, ask the prof.

Workload and Lab Nitpicks

There are labs every other week in 6.002, although occasionally the schedule gets screwy due to holidays tweaking with the due dates. Labs are fairly short, with a small pre-lab and post-lab; the longest part is the lab itself, where equipment problems do their best to destroy your work. The problem with the 38-500 lab is that most of the equipment is ancient, and sometimes the reason your lab isn't working is not your fault -- the equipment sucks, is broken, or is just glitching up. So, start your labs ahead of time to keep equipment failure from screwing you over. Also keep in mind that the stockroom contains equipment that you will need, and it closes at 5:00...so if you need a speaker for the amplifier lab, and you're working late the night before lab is due for checkoff, you'll be fighting a lab full of people for probably three or so speaker sets that more responsible people put back into the stockroom before you, the procrastinator, came to finish your lab. Don't say you weren't warned.

The problem sets can be long and tedious, but they are usually doable, at least to a moderate extent. They're nothing special.

Professors

According to alcor(cdhill), Prof. Lang was easier to understand in lecture than Prof. Perreault. He also hands out lecture notes on time, while Perreault prefers to hand them out 10+ minutes into lecture to prevent people from popping into the lecture hall and then leaving. (This doesn't work well.) Perreault also doesn't post the notes online, while Lang does. Lang does all his equations/derivations in the notes as well. Lang also wrote the textbook and thus Obviously Knows His Stuff.

Recitation instructor Prof. Jing Kong is a good instructor to get; though her recitations are early (11 AM and 12 PM), she explains concepts from the ground up and very slowly. She is often available outside of class and always makes room for students who email her asking for help in the afternoons; however, she does take 1+ full days to get back to emails, so last-minute mails don't work.