Pre-recorded lecture, no homework due. All the points are from the exams and the project. For the homework, it is good practice genuinely to get it down. Get your matrices and your differentiation and integration of sines and cosines down (there is a pattern you will see). First half of the class is lowk chill like it goes up to acceleration which is like 102 repeat for the most part. He says acceleration is difficult, but I think the second part is way worse cuz its done a little fast and he has less examples on it. The exams were RIDICULOUS. They took forever. You gotta be careful with it. But they are pretty nice with the grading. The project is like honestly pretty simple, and he gives you a surprising amount of freedom. It is hella tedious, but if you have a good group (at least 5 people usually), shouldn't be the worst in the world. And you have all quarter to figure out the timing to do it.

Lectures are prerecorded. There were also in person lectures for extra practice problems, and in person project meetings with the prof. Weekly HWs, 2 exams, and 1 project. Exam 1 was okay and exam 2 was difficult but curved. Going over all the practice problems he gives is probably enough to get an A. The project this year was a bit crazy - 20+ person groups. Hopkins himself said it's unideal but he can only handle 7 or so projects for the entire class. Projects were pretty interesting, but a lot of the group ended up doing very little. Overall workload is not too bad in comparison to other mechE classes.

The class material is pretty interesting. Professor Hopkins actually created much of the stuff he's teaching, so he lectures on it well. I would def recommend this class as an elective, very interesting and not too hard.

This class is less about learning how to design and build compliant mechanisms as it is about evangelizing the professor’s very specific and applicable approach to doing so. Mid-term and Final are each 35% of the grade, so do well on tests. Some concepts are introduced with no actual teaching (designing in CAD, how to do simple FEA, running somewhat complex MATLAB scripts) MSOL students without prior CAD, FEA, or MATLAB skills may struggle. The TA was not helpful and contradicted the professor at times, so be sure to lean on Professor Hopkins’ knowledge if you have questions. He was very reachable by email and you could tell he cared about the student experience.

Very clear lectures and very interesting material. He basically invented this field of study and he is young so he knows how to teach it well. It's a lot of 3D visualizing systems rather than doing math. 5 homeworks that aren't too hard, but need to be turned in as a hard copy on time or else you get no credit. Involves MATLAB and SolidWorks. The midterm was good. Final was brutal and only covered the last couple weeks of material (average 62). He doesn't usually curve but he had to for this one. The group project was interesting and fun to complete. This quarter, we designed and built a toy for Kinder eggs and he got a representative from the company to watch our presentations. I would take the course again since he is entertaining, there's not much math, and the content seems important for the future of design.