ABOUT THE REPORTS:
It has taken me quite some time to collate, correct, and convert these reports into a standard form.  I hope they become the start of a valuable resource for MIT students.  This page has been started with the intent that these make the start of a Mechanical Engineering How Things Work Website.  This has not been dubbed as such, but may soon be with the start of the official class 2.000 How and Why Things Work ("steroid" or semeser long version of 2.972).  These reports were written by 2.972 students as their final reports.  The purpose of the reports is to provide a basic understanding of the subject by explaining the:

1. Functional Requirements/Design Parameters
2. Geometry/Structure
3. Dominant and Limiting Physics
4. Flow of Material/Information/Power/Energy/etc...

ACCURACY:
Due to time constraints, I have only been able to perform a cursory check for errors.   I will make another, more rigorous pass as time permits (this first installment took 150+ hours!). Though some might consider this a premature release I thought it important to get the material out to get feedback and to get Roman Luz (Author of Speakers) off of my back :). 

EVOLUTION:
I am very proud of the students, they were able to finish these reports as well as several other difficult projects in the space of 2 weeks.  The response to these reports has been positive, however there is always room for improvement. After obtaining feedback from the faculty and staff (each page has a comments link, please use it), I have determined that future additions to the data base should include:

• Better description between functional requirements and design parameters
• More analytic content
• More multimedia (VRML, animations, movies, etc....)
• Better refrencing and labeling

NOTE:  Some header and title pictures are missing, I will replace these in the following week.