MIT: Independent Activities Period: IAP

IAP 2018 Activities by Sponsor - Mr. Nicholas Mehrle



Rebuild

Nicholas Mehrle

Enrollment: Sign up locks in spots, Walk Ins Welcome
Sign-up by 01/08
Limited to 25 participants
Attendance: Participants welcome at individual sessions
Prereq: Fundamental Physics

In this class we think about the question: "If you were suddenly teleported back to 500BCE (or some other time sufficiently far in the past) could you rebuild society as we know it?" For many of us, the answer to this question is an unequivocal "No", as the skills we develop in and out of the classroom tend to rely heavily on modern luxuries like computers, access to parts, and the work done by pioneers in our fields (Understanding quantum spin is useless if no one has done the Stern Gerlach experiment yet).

In this class we will think about what would need to be done to rebuild cornerstones of modern civilization such as electricity, running water, and transportaiton. We will think about ways to develop these entirely from scratch, without the access to things like copper wire that we take for granted today. In doing so, we will learn both how humanity developed these technologies in the first place, and how we can use the benefit of hindsight to rebuild. 

Please fill out this google form to express interest: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScrzQx-0q4EPKfnLh0A2ouCUj9g3oCUVxHskoHkXKV1FpPBgw/viewform

 

 

Contact: Nicholas Mehrle, 37-624b, (614) 458-8160, NMEHRLE@MIT.EDU