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

Yesterday I had the quiz in Trig about the properties of the graph of trigonometric functions (minimum, maximum, amplitude, period and y-intercept) as well as the simplification and verification of sum-to-product and product-to-sum identities.

There was one student, RJ, who kept asking questions that I didn't want to answer directly, until I told him that no more questions will be entertained during the quiz and all questions about how to go about answering the sample problems should be done during consultation before the quiz.

There were other students who had taken up Trig under Maila who said that my quiz is very easy, especially since I also give the identities that take more than 1 page to derive instead of assuming the students know how to derive them. And I guess it's true, because several students, including some who started late, finished early.

Afterwards I started with momentum and collisions in my mechanics classes. It's the second to the last topic (last being torque and rotation - already introduced in the lab), and I started out with elastic and one-dimensional collisions in the examples I gave. Next time will be two-dimensional collisions and inelastic collisions.

I also told them that since one application of collisions is in billiards, then the next time they spend hours in a billiard hall, they can tell their parents it's to understand the principles I gave them.

Another application I told them can be in ice-skating, for those of them who are into that. Of course the students immediately said that we should have another field trip just for those applications.

Yesterday I also gave them the the second project, with the topics they had to choose from, which are all set-ups that will be used for the lab next term, although the grade will be for the lecture class. There are six topics in all (projectile motion, conservation of linear momentum, the two set-ups for conservation of mechanical energy, friction and Atwood's machine), and there is a maximum of nine members per group.

There are actually two "powerhouse" groups that include the excelling students, and two other groups, as students trickled in late from lunch, tried to recruit the other above average achievers to be part of their group. It was a nice (if unexpected) lesson in politicking.

The deadline for the project is finals week, which gives them up to three weeks (including Holy Week) to get the equipment done.

And speaking of deadlines, yesterday was also the deadline for their report from the field trip. There were some students who wanted the deadline extended, but I told them that I wanted their fresh observations and remembrances about the rides. The longer they delay writing the report, the hazier their recollections of the sensations would be.

Of course, there are still some students who are submitting their reports today, although in fairness, there were some students who passed their papers early (Tuesday and Wednesday) and therefore got the bonus.