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

Yesterday I talked to some students who are against the payment scheme for using the badminton courts, after a year (or at least two terms) of having used them for free.

In brief, the new rules state that anyone who wants to use any of the courts will have to pay a per-hour fee at the accounting office. This fee increases by 60% when the court will be used from 6pm onwards (or 5pm on during the winter months) because of the electricity for the lights.

The students are protesting first of all because according to them they already pay a sports fee along with their tuition during the start of the term. I'm not sure if that fee is for their use or for the varsity teams though.

Second, they are okay with the reservation procedure to avoid some people hogging the court. After all, with the new students coming in, there is more demand for the playing area. There should be a limit imposed on how long members of the academic community (yes, teachers and staff included) can play so as not to deprive other people of the opportunity.

Guests on the other hand (those who are not employees and students of the school) should be the ones required to pay, whether they play with or without lights. This the students have no question about. I don't know if another set of rules about payment should be given about the racquets that the students can borrow.

I'm just waiting for word about the administration's reaction to the students' complaint.

In other news, I just finished the quiz I gave to the electricity and magnetism class (in other words the upper class engineering students). I was thinking of initially giving ten problems at five points each, but I only got four problems on electric charge and four on electric fields.

Well, in truth when I couldn't find another problem in the first topic, I decided to stop looking at questions on electric fields after getting four of them. That was when I thought of changing the weight or the number of points for some of the problems. I made them worth ten points instead.

After all, two of the problems on electric charge require almost twice as much analysis as the others, if that can be quantified.

This was because one problem gave only the total combined charge of two particles and they were supposed to find the individual charge.

The second ten-point problem goes one step further and looks at the charges (and the electrostatic force between them) before and after they are momentarily connected by a wire.

These two problems also required them to use the quadratic equation.

The one problem in electric fields that I set at ten points was the only problem in two dimensions, of a proton and an electron at two points of an equilateral triangle and looking for the electric field at the third point.

Knowing the students' capabilities for the past term I instinctively knew when I reread the quiz after printing that they would still find it difficult.

So I just gave it to them afterwards as the problem set also, to be submitted Thursday next week.