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

On Wednesday afternoon, supposedly an hour after I finished with the Graphics One hands-on finals, the electricity and magnetism lab finals was set, in the lab.

First of all, since the students did not have any more exams after that, I told them that we would start at 130pm so I would not have to rush my lunch.

Second, instead of having the test in the lab where it would be difficult to see if they had any cheat sheets in the obscuring compartments in front of them in the tables, I had it in one of the classrooms.

The exam covered six experiments, which really boiled down to five because any example of resistors in series and parallel or Kirchhoff’s Rules that I gave would still be an application of Ohm’s Law.

Yes, these topics again, first encountered in the lab, but first given in a test in the lecture, now, part of the coverage of the exam in the lab.

Because of this, I gave them the same two questions as were part of their exam two weeks ago in the lecture. They might have anticipated this after I told them that the problems I gave in the lecture test were the only pictures I’ve encountered giving relatively complex applications of both on the Internet.

This was because I didn’t know when the scanner would be in the faculty room for my co-teachers to use an OCR on.

Besides, it was already a boon to them to give circuits they’ve encountered twice before (the second time in the problem set).

Other than that there was one question on EMF, terminal voltage and internal resistance. There was also a multi-part question on galvanometers, used as an ammeter and a voltmeter with the adjusted scales, both derived from an “actual” reading and the value of a multiplier resistor given respectively, instead of the new maximum deflection of the scale as is usually the case.

The last problem was from the magnetic field experiment asking them to complete the table on the direction of the compass under and over a wire, and inside and on top of a coil.

My cousin was the second one to pass, immediately after George submitted his test booklet. I noticed that he did not answer the question on the galvanometer (despite having made the written report for that), and that he answered the last problem wrong, writing clockwise and counterclockwise instead of compass directions.

This was when I realized that not giving them the answers to their previous quizzes and experiments (which I thought of at the time as punishment for them not passing their problem sets on time) had backfired. Even if they did not give their problem sets at the start of the class as I asked, after which I could have discussed the solutions, I still should have made it accessible for them written down, which they could have photocopied at their leisure, and let them approach afterwards if they have questions about how the answer was arrived at.

That’s something that I will have to correct in the next term, though. It’s already too late for any exams this term. I’m done for today.