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

Returning to what I was discussing yesterday about the astronomy program thesis of the students from CCS, for the PDA component, I told them that it’s not necessary for them to have a real-time star chart that is up to date to the minute, but they can use one of twenty four frames that represent the sky as seen on the hour from sunset to sunrise for all twelve months of the year.

That means I had to teach them how to use the zodiac constellation calendar. I didn’t give them the detached sliding columns to be aligned though but the spreadsheet file that had the table for all the permutations. If my students in astronomy saw that they’d pull their hair out, or maybe mine, asking why I had forced them to contend with the somewhat confusing alignment calendar.

To bring a little more analysis into the subject, I’d say, if I could still speak at that point. I’ve demonstrated more than once before in this journal how I don’t like letting the students determine something I’ve already discussed in class without making them exercise their brain muscles a bit.

But back to the thesis students, all their PDA program has to do now is detect the current month and time and one of the 24 star map frames will be displayed on the screen. The use may then manipulate this screen to the previous frame or the next one – where some constellations have risen in the East and set in the West or vice versa - as they wish. This is even if it does not display the current view, just like with the available commercial astronomy software.

Also, it turns out that the request they had for me helping them with the picture of the constellation of Cassiopeia they found not being the same as the one in the commercial software turned out to be their mistake. They had tried to reconcile Cassiopeia with another constellation of a female, Virgo.

Lastly I discouraged them from giving a description of all the stars in a constellation, and in fact even all the constellations. Since their software will be of primary use in Manila, they could write in their paper that their consultant (me) had told them which stars and constellations are regularly visible in the polluted clime and thus should be included. I told them that experience has told me it would not do to give all the stars and constellations when there is a large possibility of NOT seeing most of them. Best to give the amateur astronomer users the focus of looking for the constellations that ARE easy to find.

As to my midterm exam in Trig yesterday, I had finished the questions the night before, twenty of them at five points each that tackled mainly the reciprocal, Pythagorean, sum and difference, double angle and half angle identities. The questions covered half of the paper, while the lower part was for the identities.

All the students had a difficult time. In fact, when I answered the questions simultaneously with them, it took me until past 9am (more than an hour). This goes against the unwritten rule on exam that teachers should only give an exam that takes us half of the time (some say a third) that is would take the students.

They were already complaining and asking for a retest or to take home the exam, but being the pragmatist that I am, I told them all that we shall see after their papers had been corrected. Talk about giving up the fight before the ship has sunk!