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

Nothing new again to report in Graphics One yesterday, except maybe that I gave them one exercise (the twenty fifth one, which I decided not to break down into several exercises) that was 47 pages long. It was a twenty-eight megabyte document that fortunately compressed to one seventh of its size. Of course, a huge contributing factor to the file’s volume was that the pages were in landscape orientation to accommodate the accompanying illustrations in larger detail than would have been possible in portrait configuration.

In electricity and magnetism lab in the afternoon we had the fourth experiment, Kirchhoff’s Rules. I helped out with the computation from the three equations (in three unknowns) due to the nodes and the loops, with the understanding that they were to handle more complicated examples when we took up the same subject in the lecture (at least four loops, this example only had three lines entering the nodes, and thus three loops).

At least with one group they were able to keep their percentage error down to a maximum of fifteen percent. I think with the others it’s only a matter of getting the values of their voltages exact, connecting the circuit correctly and measuring the right way.

One student who was absent during the oral report last week gave his excuse letter a few days afterwards, but said he wasn’t ready yet yesterday. So I’m giving the other three students a chance to prepare for their first report next week also. No more excuses for them to get a zero for that requirement.

Now, back to the topic I started yesterday about questions, the variety of blocks that I respond to the students asking impertinent questions in class include telling them that they are jumping ahead to a future topic (implying that they are not sufficiently prepared to tackle the concepts).

There is also announcing that they have just pointed out something I was going to give as a research assignment (that sometimes causes the rest of the class to blame the questioner irrationally for bringing it up).

Or, if I really want no future returns to that particular direction of query, I’ll say that I haven’t encountered anything on that subject or some similar uncertain response (using the keywords, “maybe”, “I think”, “it could be”, “possibly”, “looks like”, “perhaps”, “it might appear” and “I’m not sure but” among others) that would brook no further inquiry without getting the same inconclusive answer.

The last one is a more viable alternative to flatly stating, “I don’t know” which has in the past gotten negative responses (even teasingly) doubting the capability of the teacher, or worse, led to the student revealing the answer that they knew from the start. This may have been the student’s initial purpose in some cases and not really to gain additional knowledge out of sheer curiosity from the teacher.

At least coming after the above speculations, if the student aims to prove his knowing at the expense of the teacher’s lecture, it has already been blunted of its finality and intended impact by the other trains of thought introduced.

Usually several such replies will make the question-poser realize that his tactic of trying to become an active part of the discussion without any effort of contributing anything meaningful is not working.