Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

On Friday I handled the third mechanics lab class alone, the one where my cousin is enrolled, because David was with the Director of the School of Engineering (and Nap, who is his dissertation advisee) in Holy Angel University in Pampanga for a mechatronics exhibit.

Some students of this class (including the top dean’s lister, who is a student of Business Administration) and her group mates, two of who are taking up Engineering, already heard from the two sections last Wednesday about how difficult the activity was, that they had already tried graphing the exercises in the spreadsheet software the night before, and brought the laptop to class with their work.

This proved opportune for them because the computer lab (two rooms away) was closed while the technician-in-charge attended the culminating mass of the celebration of Founder’s Week (and National Bible Week at the same time). In fact, because I had made Monday’s mass as an alternative class, they thought this mass would be an alternative class also.

I told them I couldn’t make it alternative because they would end up behind the other classes who started this last activity last Wednesday. Although I did say those who did want to attend the mass would be excused, as long as they returned afterwards at 9am.

Of course I announced this after giving the quiz during the first five minutes of the session. No one chose to go to the mass, although there were some students who arrived after the mass had ended. I didn’t give them the five-point quiz anymore though.

And, learning from the difficulty the two classes last Wednesday encountered, I gave this class the additional clues they needed for linearizing the five equations in the graphs activity.

First of all, the theory part of the activity only gave the equations of the sets of data as being y = kxn, when in fact for two of the five exercises, the equation was y = kxn + c, with a constant added besides the coefficient. This gave the first two classes a lot of confusion trying to figure out why the resulting graph wouldn’t linearize, when they were basing the assumption on the first type of equation.

What’s worse was that another example was of the form y = k(x + q)n + c for which the constants needed even more analysis (too complex for freshmen) to be obtained. This number I just gave as a bonus if they were able to come up with the graph’s equation.

I also gave them more clues to arriving at the constants, including conclusions they could come up with if x = 0, and from the appearance of the original graph, and the fact that the exponent is within the range [-3, 3], excluding zero. Given that there were at least 7 pairs of values per set, assuming values for n would provide them with more than enough equations to solve for up to two unknowns k and c.

Unfortunately they still were not able to finish until 11 am, so just like David I told them to submit it on the next class day, which is Monday, at 12 noon.

What’s surprising is that the lab manual was just revised two years ago. A lot of errors in the other experiments were caught and changed. Why not these ones?

It’s definitely another point in favor of making my own lab manual in the near future.