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

Two more things I forgot to mention about my Mathematical Methods 1 class last Thursday. I offered them the choice of having a hundred-point test next Friday with the coverage being everything taken up this week and next week, or a fifty-point quiz October 1, which only includes topics discussed this week. As expected, the second choice won out.

Second, they arrived at this decision with half of the class missing. One student said that those absent had all accepted the invitation of one of them to the mall to watch a movie. And here I was expecting that they had a test in one of their later classes or something.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if those who skipped class had a difficult time with the quiz yesterday, given that half of the total items were from topics discussed when they didn’t attend.

In my Trigonometric Applications (not to be confused with Applied Trigonometry*, which isn’t offered in this school anyway) class last Thursday we took up the trigonometric functions of the special acute angles: 30, 45 and 60 degrees.

I showed them the derivations from any right-isoceles triangle (for 45 degrees) and half of an equilateral triangle (for 30 and 60 degrees).

I wasn’t surprised when they asked if the numeric values of these trigonometric functions had to be memorized. I said they could commit them to memory, or they prefer, just learn how to derive it themselves.

After giving them some examples of applications of substituting the functions, I asked them if they wanted more exercises or the new topic (word problems involving trigonometric functions), keeping in mind that the upcoming lesson is still part of the hundred-point exam on Thursday next week.

The majority of students opted for board exercises, so that’s what we had for the remainder of the class, replacing their usual class-end written exercise. Unlike last time though, not everyone was called to answer questions on the board. This is reward those who volunteered first, even if they took their time and the bell rang before the others could recite.

In my mechanics class in the afternoon, we started with Newton’s Three Laws of Motion. I’m adjusting a little, because in the previous textbook that I used, this was discussed after two-dimensional motion. In the new book, summation of forces (Newton’s second law) comes first and applied to one-dimensional motion before going to 2D. I’m hoping this is more comprehensible for the students. It also allows those taking this subject and Trig App simultaneously familiarization with the trigonometric functions before being applied to x- and y-components of vectors.

The discussion stops here for today. The class resumes next week.

*Taken from “Pardon Me, You’re Stepping On My Eyeball!” which I mentioned here before I bought two weeks ago. It’s by Paul Zindel, a Chemistry teacher prior to becoming a young adult novelist. The whole context is as follows: “Everybody knew that if they were in a class called Applied Chemistry or Applied Geometry that “Applied” simply meant that they were more stupid than the kids who were taking the real thing.”