Special topics in mechanical engineering: the art and science of boat design

This MIT OpenCourseWare offers an image gallery, selected video lectures, details of assignments and a reading list taken from the undergraduate course Special topics in mechanical engineering: the art and science of boat design taught in the January IAP 2007. The Independent Activities Period (IAP) is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.

This class is jointly sponsored by the MIT Museum, Massachusetts Bay Maritime Artisans, the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s Center for Ocean Engineering, and the Department of Architecture. The course teaches the fundamental steps in traditional boat design and demonstrates connections between craft and modern methods. Instructors provide vessel design orientation and then students carve their own shape ideas in the form of a wooden half-hull model. Experts teach the traditional skills of visualizing and carving your model in this phase of the class. After the models are completed, a practicing naval architect guides students in translating shape from models into a lines plan. The final phase of the class is a comparative analysis of the designs generated by the group.

Special software is required to use the video lectures in this course: .rm. These videos are also available from VideoLectures.net.

[Description and screenshot taken from MIT OCW page for this course. (c) MIT used under the terms of their CC-NC-SA license.]

Link: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mechanical-engineering/2-993-special-topics-in-mechanical-engineering-the-art-and-science-of-boat-design-january-iap-2007/
Author: Christopher Dewart; Kurt Hasselbalch; Nicholas Patrikalakis; Reuben Smith; Antonio Dias
Publication Date: 2007-01
Source: http://ocw.mit.edu/
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/
Rights: Copyright MIT. Use subject to a Creative Commons non-commercial share-alike License and other terms of use. For full details see http://ocw.mit.edu/terms/