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

Yesterday in my Mathematical Methods 1 class I started with Chapter 2 after giving a recitation on the same questions that were in the quiz.

This brought the fact to their attention that some of the exact expressions in the quiz are the same as our examples. When one of the students asked about this, I just said that the teacher in the other class had no idea what numbers in the textbook we used as our sample problems in the lecture session. So I said that it was their good fortune. Who knows? Maybe the other items in the quiz not taken up in our class were taken up in the other one.

I also got to talk to one of the students who was absent last Friday and did not take the exam. Given that it is still only the third week of classes and well within the dropping period, I was half open to the possibility that any student who is absent may already have decided to stop going to my class.

But in this case, he showed up in class again yesterday and just admitted that he was absent. I told him that he should write an excuse letter within the week and have it noted by the dean before I can give him a make up exam.

In the lecture we took up polynomial equations with one variable in the first degree, the easiest type of equation to solve for so far.

In my Trigonometric Applications class afterwards, we started on the trigonometric functions of acute angles, the equivalent equations for an angle in the standard position, the Pythagorean theorem and the related functions of two complementary angles in the same right triangle.

In the example they were shown how to compute for the trigonometric functions just given any two of the right triangles’ three sides, and how to compute for the rest of the trigonometric functions if an exact (integer, fractional, with or without a radical sign) value of the one of the functions is given.

In my mechanics class we finished the second chapter, which is about motion in one dimension. This time we talked about motion in a straight vertical line, which is free fall.

I gave them the differences between this and the horizontal one-dimensional motion we discussed last time, which is that the acceleration due to gravity is constant, downwards and negative, and that displacement, distance and position are now represented by various subscripted variables of y.

I listed down the three possible scenarios for this type of motion. First there is when an object is dropped. That means initial velocity is zero. I told them that around fifty percent of the problems about free fall would be like this.

Second, is when the object is given an initial downward velocity, and is therefore negative or less than zero. Even though this is like the first one where the motion of the object is still downwards, I told them that we would probably only have one problem like this out of ten just because it is a rare occurrence, unless someone deliberately throws something to the floor.

Wow, there’s the bell. Tomorrow I’ll finish with the third scenario in free fall, and today’s MM1 class. Those who are finished copying may go.