I took 18.034 at MIT, just like all Physics majors. It was absurd, stupid, and the most boring class I ever had. So after the first 3 classes, I never went. T

I took 18.034 at MIT, just like all Physics majors. It was absurd, stupid, and the most boring class I ever had. So after the first 3 classes, I never went. Two weeks before the final, I holed up in the Student Center Library and did all the problems. I got like 60 on the final, but the average was 40 so I aced the course. It was criminal (I am less diplomatic than Rota, who by the way, I had had for 18.02, the previous course) not to emphasize differential equations with constant coefficients. I had to take the graduate course in signals and systems (from the famous Communist Jack Kurzweil, no less) at San Jose State to fix this deficiency. After 35 years as a an optics and laser engineer (but most successfully as a salesman), here is what I would teach: 1. LDE’S w constant coefficients, up to systems, poles and zeroes, with the last week on simple control systems and the last lecture on “e to a matrix.” 10 weeks of a 15 week course. I should add that almost every really successful experimental physicist I have known has had to build a control system from scratch to solve a critical problem in his rig. 2. Numerical methods of solution especially Runge Kutta integration. Most scientists and engineers will encounter at least one situation where the company tools won’t be trickable into providing a solution. 3. If there is any time left, or perhaps in an honors class, do something with the Schrodinger equation.