an ambigram is a visual design with a word or phrase written in such a way that you can read it from multiple perspectives. scroll through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambigram for concrete examples—they're really cool! this class will progressively introduce techniques for making ambigrams and guide you through making your own! we will mostly focus on rotational ambigrams, but we will also discuss and try other types of ambigrams. your ideas for words/phrases (e.g. your names!) that we should make ambigrams of are welcome! come dive into an art form that is a wonderful mix of lettering and puzzle-solving! brush pens and chisel-tip markers will be provided, and calligraphy/typography basics will be covered (so no experience needed!). a tablet or phone that has a drawing app with a symmetry feature is nice to have, but optional.

can you draw the chemical structure for the flavor of french fries? yogurt? caramel? why are so many savory things brown, like soy sauce or steak or roasted nuts? are artificial sweeteners really that bad for you? why do you need antioxidants—what even are they, and what do they do in the body? in this class, we will connect the various food groups to different types of biological macromolecules and discuss the chemical structure of these molecules, their reactivity in the kitchen, their function and metabolism in the body, and what this all means for your everyday interactions with food. along the way, we’ll touch on many terms commonly found on nutrition labels. organic chemistry background will be provided. we may also ask for your suggestions on what to cover, in case there's some food or food fact you're itching to know the (bio)chemical details of!

you’ve been making noises with your mouth ever since you learned to talk. but what are the fundamentals behind these noises? why do “m” and “n”, and “b” and “d”, sound so similar? what properties do various sounds share? join us as we organize these properties to build a sort of periodic table for sounds! learn what terms like “voiceless labiodental fricative” and "open front unrounded vowel" mean, and learn how to systematically pronounce fascinating sounds from other languages!

you've been making noises with your mouth before you even learned to talk. you may even be familiar with the ipa as a way of classifying human mouthsounds. but what's the acoustic theory behind these sounds? what does it even mean to hear a "voiceless labiodental fricative"? join us to learn how to describe and differentiate language sounds!

in biology, we often draw enzymes and their substrates as shapes that just "fit" into each other, like a lock and key. in this class, we will instead draw the active sites and substrates of enzymes at a *molecular* level of detail, showing the individual atoms, the bonds between them, and how they interact and change as an enzyme performs its function. in particular, we will draw the chemical mechanism for how DNA polymerase synthesizes new DNA during DNA replication, as well as explain chemically why we need vitamin C to synthesize the collagen that connects our tissues. relevant organic chemistry background will be provided.

you’ve been making noises with your mouth ever since you learned to talk. but what are the fundamentals behind these noises? why do “m” and “n”, and “b” and “d”, sound so similar? what properties do various sounds share? join us as we organize these properties to build a sort of periodic table for sounds! learn what terms like “voiceless labiodental fricative” and "open front unrounded vowel" mean, and learn how to systematically pronounce fascinating sounds from other languages!

scales, intervals, chords, chord progressions. (basically what you'd find in an introductory music theory course) possible buzzwords (i.e. terms you'll understand by the end of the class): E-flat minor scale, diminished fifth, F-sharp major triad, vi-IV-I-V progression.

literally just me yapping about a variety of pretty distinct topics in math and linguistics (as well as touching on chemistry, food, and a few other subjects), unified by the common theme that words' popular usages often differ from their scientific definitions. everything is a tangent in this class; for many of the examples, we will go into detail that is absolutely not necessary to understand the main point, purely because i think they're interesting and want to share them in detail. math topics include sets and complex numbers; linguistics topics include classification of nouns and verbs.

Sing a sea shanty with the Centrifugues, MIT's mash-up a cappella group! You'll learn about the history of the sea shanty, a rhythmic song designed to help workers on a boat move in time with one another that was often sung in a call-and-response format. We'll do fun music exercises, sing a sea shanty, and even make up some of our own verses. No singing experience is required.

an ambigram is a visual design featuring a word or phrase written in such a way that you can read it from multiple perspectives. scroll through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambigram for concrete examples—they're really cool! this class will present examples of ambigrams, discuss techniques for making ambigrams, and guide you through making your own! you can choose whatever words and phrases you want; we'll probably start by making ambigrams of all our names (making ambigrams is more possible than you think! but of course, some words/phrases/names have letter combinations that just won't work). this class will mostly focus on rotational ambigrams, since they're the easiest and the most common, but other types of ambigrams (see descriptions below) will be discussed too, and i'd be super excited to try some together! come dip your toes into an art form that is a wonderful mix of calligraphy and puzzle-solving—you'll probably also pick up some calligraphy skills along the way (no experience needed)! brush pens and chisel-tip markers will be provided; bring your phones as well so you can try making ambigrams digitally! (the symmetry option in drawing apps is very useful) types of ambigrams: there are rotational ambigrams (rotationally symmetric; readable normally and upside down), mirror ambigrams (vertically symmetric; readable normally and in a mirror), "lake" ambigrams (horizontally symmetric; readable normally and when reflected as in a lake), and more! there are also asymmetric ambigrams, including asymmetric versions of the above types (which read as a different word/phrase when turned upside down or reflected), as well as perceptual shift ambigrams and figure-ground ambigrams (which can read as multiple different words/phrases from a single perspective depending on how you process it).