Courses Taught by Rusen Yang

University Physics I

Course description: Physics is the study of the interactions of matter and energy. This course covers the fundamentals concepts in Newtonian mechanics and gravitation, work and energy, rotational dynamics, vibrations and waves, light and optics, the kinetic theory of gases, internal energy, the first law of thermodynamics and its application, entropy and the second law of thermodynamics.


University Physics II

Course description: A continuation of University Physics I. This course covers electrostatics, magnetostatics, induction, Maxwell’s equations, quantized aspects of nature, wave-particle duality, elementary wave mechanics, atomic and nuclear structure, and brief introduction of laser and semiconductor.


Advanced Analysis Methods for Materials

Course description: This course offers a critical and comparative overview of the most common interdisciplinary materials characterization methods, with focus on modern methods related to the instrumentation available on campus in the Center for Advance Materials Fabrication and Characterization. This course will cover the fundamental knowledge of X-ray and electron beam methods and help students understand the operation and analysis procedures of X-ray diffractometers and electron microscopes. Laboratory is an important part of this course.


Crystal Physics

Course description: This course covers the derivation of symmetry theory; lattices, point groups, space groups, and their properties; use of symmetry in tensor representation of crystal properties, including anisotropy and representation surfaces; and applications to piezoelectricity and elasticity.

ME3221: Design and Manufacturing I

The goal of this course is to provide information and techniques so that material failure, engineering design and manufacturing engineering questions can be understood, asked, and answered using fundamental engineering science concepts.

The general goal is to provide knowledge so that informed observations can be made about part design, the effects of material characteristics and process parameters on part and process performance and product quality. This goal is pursued by studying various material failure theories, considering selected aspects of mechanical part design and analyzing various manufacturing processes using existing process models.

ME5223: Materials in Design

The course will stress selection of materials to fulfill specific design and functional requirements, to guard against progressive and/or catastrophic failure, and to meet design-manufacturing requirements.

The course aims to provide the theoretical and science background for selection of materials used in engineered products and to provide practical guidelines for material selection in the design context. Similar considerations apply for process selection.

Since polymeric materials have come into extensive engineering use in machines and consumer products, discussion of design principles applicable to polymers (and rubbers) will be an integral part of this course.

The first part of the course will stress materials selection. The second part of the course will focus on polymeric materials and design with polymers. The final part of the course will focus on design against failure.


ME8243: Nanotechnology for Solid-State Energy Conversion

Nanotechnology plays an important role in diverse energy applications, heat transfer, photovoltaics, and thermoelectrics, while their energy carriers of electrons, photons, and phonons display similar wave-particle duality and are governed by the same quantum mechanics. Different energy transport and conversion are treated in a parallel fashion in this course to ease the leaning of a diverse student body while different processes are emphasized later in this course.

The objective of this course is to introduce some of the fundamentals and current state-of-the-art in solid-state energy conversion through lectures from the instructor, guest lectures, selected readings, and special topic presentation from the students.