Thoughts and ideas from my teaching of signals and systems class (18-290)

If you're an instructor of signals and systems, please share your examples with me, and I'll add them to the list (withdue credit). Here are some examples and hands-on demonstrations that I use in the class to demonstrate concepts in signals and systems:

3-D glasses (red/blue) to demonstrate filtering (first lecture; these things are very cheap and can be purchased for every student. We even had a homework problem on these glasses.).

Cochlear implants and how the ear breaks signal down into frequencies (coincidentally, one of the students had received a cochlear implant, so it got folks excited).

Aliasing/Sampling: videos of drops of water stationary/flowing up. See example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mODqQvlrgIQ

Amplitude modulation (a demonstration of how increasing the carrier frequency yields a signal envelope which is very close to the original signal. I used wolfram-alpha in the class, which tends to be faster and clearer than matlab).

Fourier series representation of a square wave: summing up the first two terms, three terms, four terms, etc. to show how the signal converges to the square wave (using wolfram alpha). Also shows a) Gibbs phenomenon; b) How the point of Fourier transform is to break the signal into fast-moving sinusoids and slow-moving sinusoids.

Wireless power transfer and Tesla coil/plasma sphere: how to choose the optimal power-transfer frequency (plot the transfer function for the coupled inductor system and choose the frequency that maximizes it). Also makes for a lively classroom demonstration.

More examples collected by Peter Wei and Ana Beisy Cruz, two students who took signals and systems with me and Bruno Sinopoli in Spring 13.