# Course information

## Spring 2022

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## 1) Course Description

The catalog description for the class can be found here.

## 2) Prerequisites

Both 8.02 and 18.03/2.087 are important prerequisites for taking 6.002; 18.03/2.087 may be taken as a co-requisite. 8.02 provides the electromagnetics background from which much of circuit element laws are derived, while 18.03/2.087 provide a background in the differential equations that describe the dynamics of circuits. It is difficult to focus on the concepts introduced in 6.002 without the physical and mathematical foundations that these prerequisites provide.

## 3) Schedule

### Lectures

Lectures are Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:00a - 12:00p, in 3-270. You are responsible for material presented in lectures, including oral comments made by the lecturer. Lecture notes will be posted online shortly before lecture. The notes will also be available at lecture for those who prefer paper copies.

### Recitation

One-hour recitations are Wednesdays at 11 am, 12 pm and 1 pm, all in 26-210. Recitation sections are assigned by the Registrar.

### Design Labs

There are mandatory weekly design labs Fridays in 38-530 (9a-11a, 11a-1p, 1p-3p, 3p-5p), where we will re-inforce material through the use of design and hands-on building. Labs are anticipated to take approximately 2 hours each. Lab sections are assigned via the Registrar. Lab grades are based on completion, assessed via checkoff discussions with staff as well as completion of any associated online tutor exercises.

All students are required to take EHS Electrical Safety Awareness course 509 by logging on to Atlas here. Failure to do so will result in your inability to use the 6.002 lab.

To receive full credit for completing a lab, its final checkoff must be completed by 5 pm on the corresponding Friday.

All labs must be completed by the end of the term, even if the lab is so late as to provide no credit (see late policy below). Students who do not complete all the labs by the end of the term will not be assigned an overall class grade in the A range.

### Office Hours

• Mondays, 6:30 - 9:00 pm in 38-530
• Tuesdays, 4:00 - 5:00 pm in 10-140H (Prof. Kevin Chen)
• Tuesdays, 6:30 - 9:00 pm in 38-530
• Thursdays, 2:00 - 3:00 pm in 36-465 (Prof. Qing Hu)
• Thursdays, 5:00 - 6:00 pm in 13-3005B (Prof. Farnaz Niroui)
• Fridays, 1:00 - 2:00 pm in 39-567 (Prof. Tomas Palacios)

If none of these hours work for you, please email one of the instructors and we will find some other time to meet. Thank you.

## 4) Homework

Homework will be made available online on the web site, typically released on Wednesdays at night and due the following week on Wednesday at 11:59 PM. Because weekly homework is offered online, its completion is based on the successful submission of the online exercises. In general, homework will consist of two parts. The first part will be short-form questions submitted through the website and graded immediately. The second part will be long-form questions submitted through Gradescope and graded over the next several days. Please familiarize yourself with our policies on homework collaboration.

## 5) Textbook

The 6.002 text book, Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits, by Agarwal and Lang, may be purchased at the Tech Coop. There is also a small number of books on reserve at Barker Library. The text is also available online via the MIT libraries.

## 6) Videos

Many online videos (Youtube, Khan Academy, etc.) are available to go over various topics in circuit theory. In particular, video lectures from an older OCW version of 6.002 are available for viewing on the web. These videos are great review of particular topics, just be aware that the topics, order, and particular emphasis of 6.002 has changed alot since those videos were recorded!

We also have custom-made videos for each topic, noted on the course calendar.

## 7) Online circuit simulators

In 6.002, we will mainly use the online circuit simulator developed here at MIT by Prof. Jacob White and Prof. Chris Terman. You can find it here.

Another option is:

Websim provides interactive simulations of specific circuits.

## 8) Exams

There will be two evening (7:30-9:30) midterms of 2 hr each, each counting for 20% of your overall grade:

• Wednesday, March 9, 2022, room 6-120
• Wednesday, April 13, 2022, room 50-340

Recitations will be cancelled on the days of the quizzes. Additionally, the homework assigned during the quiz weeks will be shortened.

In addition, there will be a final exam. The date for this exam will be announced in class, once that we know it.

The exams are closed-book, though you may bring one two-sided sheet of notes to each exam. One lecture or recitation or lab or pset during each midterm week will be cancelled.

Attendance at exams is mandatory. If circumstances make it impossible to take the exam at the scheduled time, please contact 6.002-lecturers@mit.edu by Tuesday of the week prior to the exam to arrange to take a make-up exam. If you have an accommodation letter, please contact 6.002-lecturers@mit.edu by Tuesday of the week prior to the exam to make the appropriate arrangements. In general, we do not make exam arrangements other than those described above unless we receive an email from the Deans at Student Support Services.

You will have two weeks from the day each exam is returned to request a grading review. If you wish to have your exam grade reviewed, you must submit your request via Gradescope for a specific question, along with an explanation of why you think a grading mistake was made. This is the only way in which an exam grade will be reviewed.

## 9) Overall Grade

Initial grading will be based on the following assignment weighting:

• final: 30%
• midterms: 40%
• homework: 20%
• labs: 10% (note all the labs need to be completed to get more than a B in the course)

During the final grading discussion, we will examine the general trend of your performance in 6.002 over the course of the semester, as well as participation in class and office hours. This discussion can affect your letter grade, particularly if your initial grade is on a letter-grade boundary. 6.002 has been designed so that lectures, recitations, labs, office hours and homework are integral and essential parts of the learning process. Although there is no specific reward for participation, there is a clearly defined penalty for not participating. Students who consistently miss lectures, recitations and homework will not be included in the grading discussions.

## 10) Late submissions

We provide a lateness penalty for late submissions of problem sets and labs, along with dropping of two lowest problem set grades. Due dates for online problem set and lab checkoffs are posted on the web site.

The grades for late submissions will be multiplied by a lateness penalty P that is calculated from n, the number of minutes late (no counting weekends):

P = max(0.0, min(1.0, 1-float(n)/(7*24*60*2)))

as shown below:

The lateness multiplier for late assignments decreases linearly from 1.0 at 0 minutes late to 0.0 at 14 days late. Assignments completed more than 2 weeks after the due date will not receive credit. The following table shows some numerical examples:

Submitted Max Credit Received
on time 100%
1 hour late 99.7%
8 hours late 97.6%
24 hours late 92.8%
2 days late 85.7%

For lab checkoffs, the completion of which requires your presence in the lab, only times during lab hours and office hours will count toward this penalty.

This penalty is applied to each question or checkoff independently, so questions and checkoffs that were completed on time will not be penalized, even if other parts of the same lab or exercise were completed late.

We will also automatically drop the two lowest problem set grades. This is in addition to the late policy described above. This drop policy is intended for obligations such as sports, music, inteviews, projects, or any other reason. No extra accomodations will be given for these activities. We do not drop the lowest lab grade.

Any exceptions to the late policy describe above require support from S^3. If you are experiencing personal or medical difficulties that prevent you from completing some of the work in 6.002, please talk with a dean at S^3, and, with their support, we can offer additional extensions or alternative arrangements. Without written support from Student Support Services, we cannot offer any exceptions to the rules outlined on this page.

## 11) Staff

You can contact the 6.002 instructors (Tomas, Jeff, Qing, Kevin) via 6.002-instructors@mit.edu. You can contact the TAs via 6.002-tas@mit.edu.