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

I just found out yesterday morning that there are a total of more than fifty suggestions listed down already for the interactive science display. That’s not even expanding the general suggestions like the optical illusions, impossible constructions and the sliding puzzles.

In my electricity and magnetism lecture class yesterday afternoon, I postponed the submission of their problem set to next week because the students had a difficult exam (midterms) in David’s intermediate mechanics one class just three hours before. Have to see if I can help some of the students understand their lessons who are already saying they will have to repeat IntMec1 after believing they did horribly in the exam.

Started on the chapter about capacitance, giving the equations relating it to change and potential difference, and to area of and distance between the plates. Also gave the special equations for cylindrical and spherical capacitors, which have their own computations for area, of course, depending on inner and outer radius of the plates. Started with circuits in the lecture, showing how to get the total capacitance in series and parallel. Lastly gave the relation between electrical potential energy and capacitance.

Told them a true story about knowing how to deal with capacitors, which a former teacher and co-teacher told me his dad did to deal with a know-nothing superior who did not have the technical aptitude for the job but was given the position due to nepotism. In short, busybody boss caught the discharge of a capacitor dad left lying around, would not admit to the ignorance of what he did, and learned his lesson the hard way to stay away from things he did not have the training for.

Asked them if we had sufficient coverage for a quiz on Thursday next week, or did they want to delay the quiz and add more topics. Of course the first option won.

They have to produce a new sheet of equations by Tuesday.

On a related note to what I was discussing yesterday, the College of Computer Science undergraduate students doing their thesis on astronomy software sent me another e-mail today, asking me to repeat something they say I told them before about how different the path of the moon looks like during the solstices and the equinoxes.

Unfortunately that was just a prediction of the graph I had which turned out to be incorrect, as I had realized myself even before seeing the graphs for the months of the other solstices and equinox other than March. I just told them that the first graph they showed me was correct.

The only thing I asked them to add to the graphs I saw was for each curved line from East to West to be labeled as to the day it occurred, so that the students looking at the software would know that they were seeing something that was plotted chronologically for the span of one month.