Electromagnetic Energy: From Motors to Lasers
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this electrical engineering course on how electromagnetic and quantum mechanical principles show up in real devices. Lecture notes and materials cover energy conversion and power flow in macroscopic and quantum-scale systems, including electric motors, generators, and circuit elements, then move into quantum tunneling structures and instruments. A second strand treats photons as both waves and particles, tracing their interaction with matter through optoelectronic devices such as solar cells, displays, and lasers. The course was developed with help from MIT staff including Scott Bradley, David Friend, Ta-Ming Shih, and Yasuhiro Shirasaki, with lecture notes prepared for OCW publication by Kyle Hounsell, Ethan Koether, and Dmitri Megretski. As with other MIT OCW offerings, materials are free to access, with no certificate offered. The course sits in MIT's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science curriculum and assumes familiarity with electromagnetism fundamentals.