The first transistor, created at Bell Laboratories in 1947, was about 4 centimeters in size. Today, millions of transistors fit on a single computer processor chip—about the size of a postage stamp. Innovations like these are hallmarks of the exciting and challenging field of electrical engineering. This course explores foundational concepts, starting with electromagnetism. You’ll map the electric field lines generated by an electric charge and investigate current, voltage, resistance, energy, and magnetism.

Bring your experiences to life on the page in this personal essay course. Through 10 assignments, we’ll experiment with different essay formats to describe scenes, illustrate conflicts, narrate events, share memories, and extract meaning for yourself and your readers. As you progress through the course, you will use your senses to create vivid descriptions, observe and choose details that convey your perspective to readers, imagine experiences and describe events from other points of view, and deconstruct essays and use them to create new works of writing.

What do your T-shirt, water bottle, and DNA have in common? They’re all made of chemical units called monomers, which combine to form polymers. To make the world a better place, scientists regularly modify and improve polymers—that’s how we have things like non-stick pans, raincoats, and toothbrushes.

Develop strategies for solving a wide variety of word problems using resources from Ken Johnson and Ted Herr’s Problem Solving Strategies: Crossing the River with Dogs and Other Mathematical Adventures. Explore diagrams, systematic lists, elimination, working backwards, matrix logic, and unit analysis as you strengthen your ability to use these strategies to solve a wide variety of complex problems.

What are the key indicators of an economy’s performance? How do governments craft policies that promote economic growth? What does it mean for a country to have a trade deficit? Analyzing economies at an aggregate level, macroeconomics explores questions such as these, providing a bird’s-eye view of economic activity. This course surveys fundamental concepts in macroeconomics, including money, banking, inflation, employment, national income, economic growth, financial markets, and the role of public policy.

Become an investigator and search for clues within each story, then try to solve the puzzle! In this course, you and your classmates/fellow detectives will journey to 19th century London with Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, solve puzzles with a young savant, and join a ragtag group of students on a quest to preserve the history of the Harlem Renaissance, all while reading stories of danger, fantasy, and suspense.

In this course, we’ll explore futuristic dystopian worlds where courageous young heroes must step up to fight against propaganda, oppression, and violence. While reading thought-provoking novels and short stories, we’ll learn the characteristics of the dystopian genre of literature and explore authors’ stated intentions and inspiration. You will deepen your understanding of the texts, literary terms, and common themes in dystopian YA literature, all while completing written and multimedia assignments and engaging in online forum discussions with classmates from around the world.

Learn to master the core elements of fiction writing, such as plot, theme, dialogue, and character development by reading and analyzing short works of fiction and writing your own. Assignments are modeled after those taught in undergraduate fiction courses such as the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, and in John Gardner's books The Art of Fiction and On Becoming a Novelist. You’ll learn the techniques of seasoned fiction writers and use them to tap into your own imagination to create several pieces of short fiction.

In this creative writing course, we’ll explore poetry, fiction, drama, and non-literary works that use science as inspiration. After reading scientific poems, science fiction short stories, and a play about a scientist’s life, we’ll experiment with your own writing in these genres, using our course readings as models. You will also plan and realize a Capstone Creative Project that combines both art and science.

The saying goes, “You are what you eat,” and in this chemistry class, you’ll learn how true that adage really is. With your classmates, you’ll explore the ways fats, proteins, and carbohydrates fuel our bodies and make energy for everything from taking a breath to reading a book to running a marathon. Through lab experiments and class discussions, you’ll examine the composition of familiar foods, consider the chemical reactions necessary to make them, and explore the role foods play in health and disease.