8.01X (Classical Mechanics) at MIT...available for free online...how about it?

[KevinTMC]

SHORT VERSION OF POST:

Professor Lewin's renowned 8.01X course at MIT has been packaged for the online edX format, is starting soon, and is free for anyone anywhere in the world to take. Who's in?

LONG VERSION OF POST:

"So...physics! Physics, eh? Physics! Phyyyysics! Physics, physics, physics, physics, physics. I hope you're getting all this down..."

(Dr. Who quote shamelessly nicked from Jack Wolfe's sig)

Anyhow, I never learned much physics in the classroom. My high school physics course was quite sad on several levels; while the unit of physics I took in college, from an endearingly goofy Cajun tennis player, was fun but very watered-down for us hardcore liberal arts types.

Since neither my father nor my brother enjoyed physics much either, or ever got that far in it (even though they were science majors themselves: chemistry and biology respectively) I had half-decided it was hopeless to try to learn. Maybe there was even some bizarre genetic defect at work.

Playing Kerbal Space Program, off and on for the past 14 months, has changed my attitude utterly. I'm both hungry to know more of the science, and optimistic that some of it might even take root in my head.

It got my attention, then, when a post about this course turned up in my Facebook news feed today:

Walter Lewin reimagines, inspires, and will change your life in 8.01x Classical Mechanics from #MITx and #edX. Sign up to understand the world you live in:

https://www.edx.org/course/mit/8-01x/classical-mechanics/853

(I'd been keeping an eye on the edX project for work reasons--I've got a ground-level student-services job at a university.)

I may be biting off more than I can chew (I hope I can dig enough high-school math out of the recesses of my brain, and/or find enough time to review materials from the co-requisite calculus course, to survive!), but I've registered and I'm going to give it a go. How about the rest of the KSP community? Will I have company...or is everyone else either already too advanced for this course, not interested in this sort of thing, too bereft of spare time, or just not as crazy as I am?

[K^2]

Bah, they really ought to have been more careful with names. Typically, the name "Classical Mechanics," is reserved for a much heavier course. I was about to write a couple of paragraphs warning people that Classical Mechanics is far more advanced than anything in KSP, but this course actually seems like it's designed to be an introductory one.

[KOCOUR]

I took Mechanics Reviev.

Holy hell did i rely forgot so much since i finished school?