Saturday 10 January 2015

eDX

EdX offers interactive online classes from the world's best universities. Online courses from MITx, HarvardX, BerkeleyX, UTx and many other universities. Topics include biology, business, chemistry, computer science, economics, finance, electronics, engineering, food and nutrition, history, humanities, law, literature, math, medicine, music, philosophy, physics, science, statistics and more. EdX is a non-profit online initiative created by founding partners Harvard and MIT.




Because there is more in life than radio and electronics a couple of weeks ago I decided to participate in a course called "The violent universe". This course explores the most deadly parts of the universe: white dwarfs, supernovae, neutron stars and black holes. 
Brian Schmidt and Paul Francis astrophysicists at the Australian National University are the teachers.

I learned a lot about astrophysics. For example calculating dimensions and masses of objects in deep space like neutron stars and white dwarfs.
This course gives you a feeling of the huge amounts of energy we are dealing with in outer space. I enjoyed the course a lot. It includes a lot of YouTube movies, mathematical questions and of course the final examination.

Following subjects are discussed during the course:

ANU-ASTRO3x The Violent Universe
Section 1: White dwarf stars
Section 2: Degenerate stars and Quantum Mechanics
Section 3: Dwarf Novae
Section 4: Classical Novae, the Chandrasekhar Limit and Nuclear Physics
Section 5: Thermonuclear Supernovae
Section 6: Core Collapse Supernovae
Section 7: X-ray astronomy and Neutron stars
Section 8: Special Relativity
Section 9: Black Holes

This course takes you about 3 hours of time per week during a period of 10 weeks.
You can do this course any time (self paced). 

www.edx.org


2 comments:

  1. Wow, dat ziet er goed uit Ron. Gefeliciteerd met het certificaat. Er zijn inderdaad meer dingen dan alleen de radio hobby. Helaas te veel vrees ik....73, Bas

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ja er is zoveel moois en interessants. edx heeft in ieder geval voor elk wat wils op alle niveaus (en free of charge).

    ReplyDelete