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

In Wednesday’s Graphics One class, I finally told them that they are required to finish up to Exercise Number 50 at the end of next week’s meeting. But I only gave them numbers 43 to 46. The rest will be given next week.

I also suggested that those who feel they are way behind on the exercises complete the others during their vacant periods within the week. When one student asked me if I was going to let them keep their submission diskettes to save the exercises they were going to make up, I just told them to save them in one terminal in the computer lab then copy them to their submission disk when I give it to them next week.

Two Deiv moments: at one time he asked me if they were supposed to change the colors of the “faucets” in one plate they were going to complete. I said in a low even voice, “Yes, because that is what the instructions say.”

Later he called me again to ask how to find a certain command. I told him that that was covered in the previous exercise. That’s when he admitted to me that he skipped the other exercises. Not for the first time, I told him that the exercises were numbered because they built up on complexity and the assumption that the student was already familiar with the commands in the exercises before the present one.

Also in that class there was a student who complained to me that he could not save to his disk anymore because it was full. I told him to delete files in his disk.

He returned a while later saying that he had deleted the files but still could not save to his disk. I suggested that he save his file in the hard drive first, then just copy it to his disk. He had no more questions after that.

I also discovered the ingenuity of some students who did not ask me if they could delete exercises when their disk was full. Instead they just placed all the previous exercises in a compressed file in their disk. That’s one way to retain all their submitted requirements.

In my electricity and magnetism class, we performed the last experiment, which was, of course magnetic fields. The thing was, that the procedure was different in the new lab manual from the one that I was used to, and the one that I asked them to bring materials for.

For one thing, no one was able to get iron filings. There were some that were in the laboratory used in the other classes, but these were drill shavings that looked like tiny silver curly fries. This did not make ideal magnetic field patterns on the paper on top of the bar magnets. Maybe I’ll still require them to “donate” real iron filings as a bonus project.

Next, we had difficulty with the compass changing direction above and below the straight wire and the coil.

First, we had two coils. One was a bare but coated (if that makes sense) wire. The second one was thicker, but was insulated. These we also used for the straight wire, with the addition of the some gray fence wire the technician had available.

That will have to wait until next time though. It’s already time. Those who are finished copying what’s on the board may now go.