Waterfall Fall 18
Course Catalog

You've heard of a regular egg drop...but have you head of a reverse egg drop? Drop a fragile egg INTO a contraption you designed to safely catch it. Encounter added challenges and use the engineering design process to overcome them! Sponsored by STEMout, Northeasten's STEM outreach organization

Do you enjoy clean water, fresh air, and a healthy environment? Have you ever wondered how engineers and scientists design systems that protect our most valued natural resources? Come learn how environmental engineers use chemistry, physics, and a comprehensive understanding public policy to keep our people and environment safe from harm. In addition to learning about the field, we will be performing a hands-on activity using a common waste water treatment process to make dirty water clean! Sponsored by STEMout, Northeasten's STEM outreach organization

Have you ever thought to yourself that there should be an easier way to do things? If so, this activity will be a great introduction to Lean Process Improvement, which helps make processes more efficient and less wasteful.


In this activity you will learn the basics of Lean Process in Industrial Engineering by altering a process for decorating a cookie. In this simple activity, you will be able to see how processes can be improved by examining each step in order to determine how work is divided up among employees. While decorating cookies is a very simple process when compared to the ones engineers deal with on a daily basis, it should give you an understanding about how lean process can be applied to your daily life.

In this class, we will focus on the dilemmas between liberty and justice that modern democratic states face in making state policy. We will have discussions about how states should make policies in cases where pursuing justice would infringe on individual liberties. This will include a discussion about what are liberties and what is justice. We will then talk about cases like naming children, restricting sugar content in fast food, smoking regulations, circumcision and the banning of religious headwear.

In this class, we will work with students to strengthen individuals' speaking confidence. We will cover speaking styles as well as effective speech writing. We will spend the second half of the class practicing speaking in front of other people to make sure students get a chance to leave with some practice under their belt.

What defines a life well lived? How can you live your best life? Clearly, these questions have no definitive answers, but that’s what makes philosophy fun! Through philosophical discourse, you can deepen your outlook on friendship, love, careers, and way of life. Among others, we will study the work of Aristotle, Diogenes, and Nietzsche, focusing on how you can apply their work to your everyday life. The class will focus on seminar-style discussion, giving you the chance to voice your opinions and engage with other class members.

What is love? Who can consent to sex, and how? Is gender fixed, fluid, something else? These are just a sampling of the questions we will discuss in this course. Through studying various philosophical theories, we can deepen our understanding of love, sex, and gender, as well as how it affects the world around us. Among others, we will study the work of Plato, Nietzsche, and Foucault. The class will focus on seminar-style discussion, giving you the chance to voice your opinions and engage with other class members.

This course provides an introduction to CSS, HTML, and Javascript as a basis for creating a personal website.


Prerequisites
No previous experience is required, however some programming experience may be helpful

Ever wanted to calculate the value of $$\pi$$ by throwing things on the ground? In this class, we can do that in two different ways! The Monte Carlo method uses probability to easily do otherwise complex calculations. It was invented during the Manhattan project and today has applications in everything from physics to finance.


Prerequisites
No programming experience is needed for this class, but it will help with implementing the algorithms on your own time

What is a group? Something something Rubik's cube counting. Something something prime numbers.

This class will serve as intro do what mathematicians actually do (hint: we don't just multiply really big numbers).

We aim to provide a not-so-precise, overarching view of some of the cooler concepts you'll learn in college level math.


Prerequisites
Interest in abstract mathematics

We'll cover the common cognitive biases that affect the way people interact with each other in society. What makes up (and breaks down) how people act, think, believe, and react. We'll cover both biases that affect individuals and groups and include interactive activities to help students learn about the different biases by seeing how they themselves often are affected by them.

Ah, yes, chemistry labs. The only place in the world where people hand you-- no, make you handle-- substances that you otherwise aren't supposed to touch with a ten-foot-long pole. Of course, high school chemistry labs are only mildly very dangerous, so for this class we're going to kick things up a notch, and give a brief, sometimes ridiculous introduction to some chemicals that ought to be kept in a fume hood behind several locked doors, and some other that you may come across if you study chemistry in the future-- even though they too probably ought to be locked up as well.


Prerequisites
A bit of high-school level chemistry. Knowing a bit about the reactivity of different periods on the periodic table would be really useful.

Come and learn about all sorts of interesting topics. We will cover 4 different science topics with interactive experiments and demonstrations!

From neurotransmitters to muscles, we will explore the neural systems and mechanisms behind movement.
Additionally, we will look at what happens when these systems go astray in Parkinson's Disease and essential tremor.

***Knowledge of general biology is assumed


Prerequisites
General biology is expected; knowledge of neuroscience would be advantageous

In the past ten years, Russian operatives have absolutely not poisoned a man with radioactive materials, nor poisoned another man with a deadly neurotoxin, and they certainly didn't accidentally shoot down a commercial airliner. Because that would be ridiculous.

This class will cover how forensics teams cracked a few infamous international incidents. It will have a focus on the techniques and evidence involved in figuring out the likely players in international crime, and explains why the international community implicated the people that they did.


Prerequisites
Comfortable talking about some pretty nasty crimes; if you're not comfortable with discussions involving death and blood, please don't take this class.

AKA: Psychopharmacology

We're going to cover and discuss a variety of potential topics relating to drugs (illicit and prescription) - their effects on behavior, their action in the brain, and even societal implications agents can have.

About a third of the class is fueled by your questions, so don't hesitate to bring them along!


Prerequisites
Some biology, chemistry, or psychology might be helpful. The only thing I really ask is that you come into the class with an open mind and the ability to take the topics seriously.

"Multiple personalities," hearing color, surviving a rod being blasted through your brain, and more - welcome to an exploration through various topics in neuroscience and abnormal psychology.

Please be sure to bring any questions you may have relating to psychiatric and neurological disorder!


Prerequisites
Some biology, chemistry, or psychology would definitely be helpful but this course will be pretty comprehensive. Like my "drugs" class, all I ask is you have an open mind and the ability to take things seriously. Everything will be nice and light hearted for the most part, but a number of our topics are fairly serious.

Are e-cigarettes and marijuana going to destroy today's teenagers? Do vaccines cause autism? Aren't people with mental illness violent?

If you've ever wanted to know the answer to any of these questions, I have good news: Scientific literature can help you find it. If you want to be a doctor, a scientist, or just someone who can put their money where their mouth is, you'll need to learn how to think and read like a scientist. And understanding how to read scientific literature is the key to doing so.

NOTE: This class is especially for anyone with an interest in biology as that is my chosen field - some of our discussion will revolve around neuroscience and microbiology techniques and data.

We're gonna go through a crash course with topics that include how research studies are designed, how to read a scientific article, and what some methods are that scientists use.


Prerequisites
Part of the course will be kind of "journal club" based, so I *strongly* recommend you familiarize with this article (just glance it over, we'll go through it together in class): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4851458/

This course will provide a detailed guide for how to play and win the game of Survivor. Based off the TV show of the same name, Survivor is a very complex game requiring physical, mental, and social abilities. This class will hopefully teach you more about how to make the game work in your favor and show you the path to winning a million dollar game.

Come learn to write and speak Mandarin Chinese! We will be going over the following conversational topics:
1) Restaurant situation
2) Meeting up with friends and making decisions

Also see our sister class Chinese Conversation: Cooking and TV for more topics!

As of the 8th of October, the IPCC has finally given up and admitted just how screwed we are. After decades of caution and conservative estimation, they have finally been forced to acknowledge that climate change is much further along than we thought. There is no saving the world--but there might be saving ourselves. In this class, we will discuss ways that we as individuals can prepare ourselves to ride out the end of the world in comfort and style.

Come learn to write and speak Mandarin Chinese! We will be going over the following conversational topics:
Numbers, Time, and Money
Also see our sister class Chinese Conversation: Restaurants and Friends

Both classes can be taken in any order