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

Didn’t think I was going to be able to post today, as a lightning burst affected the school’s dial-up earlier. But now, almost an hour later, it’s fine.

Returning to my mechanics lecture last Thursday, I only concentrated on forces in one dimension for horinzontal motion.

This is because for vertical motion, I would have to introduce weight and normal force already, and according to the new textbook I’m following, normal force is already tackled in the chapter after motion in two dimensions is given.

It was good to give the students a fundamental understanding of the summation of forces starting with only one dimension, because last time (two terms or 12 months ago), I remember only going into summation of forces when we were already taking up motion in two dimensions.

Seeing the results of their first quiz though, I would have to emphasize the basic concepts again.

After all, one of the first things they have to be able to analyze is when certain motion stated is with constant velocity and with constant acceleration.

In the quiz there were some students who were using the equations for constant acceleration on constant velocity, which obviously led to wrong results if they did not follow the conditions that initial velocity is equal to final velocity and acceleration is equal to zero.

I also introduced to them the special case that if an object’s velocity is constant, the force acting on it is zero because the acceleration is also zero.

Last Friday David and I had the second quiz in Mathematical Methods 1. Again I was the one who made the questionnaire. Not that I’m complaining. Better that I choose all the questions than accept someone else’s test that I will later have to trim down in terms of what I know my students can answer from what we discussed in class.

At least there were no more last minute corrections this time.

There were five questions on getting the solution set of an equation with one variable in one degree. Three of these contained rational expressions. Only one of those three were answerable by direct cross multiplication. The others had to use simplification by multiplying with the least common denominator.

As for the word problems, there was one on the perimeter of a rectangle, another on simple investments (for a total interest given two principals at different rates), two on mixtures and one on uniform motion.

David was the one who decided on having two problems on mixtures instead of one and two problems on uniform motion, as I originally intended.

It was hopeful that most of the students submitted their papers early. Finding out if they just gave up or really did finish fast is another thing altogether.

There’s the bell. I’ll discuss today’s classes tomorrow.