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

In the first of my two Trigonometry Applications classes this week I gave them the review questions for the quiz that we were supposed to have yesterday, October 21.

The first type of question gave the value of the trigonometric function of an angle whose range is also given that defined which quadrant it is in. From here they preceeded like in the previous exercises for determining x, y and r, except that from there they had to know when x or y were negative and thus when other trigonometric functions are negative.

Another set of questions was a variation of the first, giving one function and whether another function is greater than or less than zero. From this they could go about finding out what the quadrant was again.

The third kind was another twist on the first two, where two of the trigonometric functions were now given. Besides using these to find out which quadrant the angle is, they could use either of the values (usually a fraction) to find out the sides x, y and r, and the other functions.

Fourth, operations involving the trigonometric functions of angles that are either larger than 90 degrees or less than zero are given. If they knew how to look for the reference acute angle, they would see that these were the same as the special acute angles we discussed in a previous lesson. From there it is just a matter of substituting, getting either the sum or the product of fractions, and rationalizing radical expressions in the denominator.

Next there were items that gave either the positive or negative value of a trigonometric function, and they had to give the two angles between zero and 360 degrees for which that function held true. The trick here is that the value given is that of special angles again. Here they have to do the reverse of getting the reference angle, but only after determining which two of the four quadrants that function has a negative or positive value.

Lastly, similar to the previous question they had to give the two angles between zero and 2 times pi. This was to show to them that they still had to keep in mind the early lessons on converting from degrees to radians and vice versa.

Unfortunately they could not complete the 19 questions in the hour and a half long period, so I just told them to copy the rest to practice before the quiz.

They asked if I would return their papers to them, and instead I said that I would give them a copy of the answers in the afternoon.

Several things prevented me from finishing it at the deadline I set: when I started writing it out longhand, I went through three false starts since I did want to use correction tape. That was when I decided to write and edit the whole thing electronically instead, since the way to answer most of the questions could easily be copied and pasted as well. There was my mechanics 1 class from 240 - 410pm. Lastly, I worked on the assumption that only one of the computers in the faculty room had a word processor with an equation editor, forcing me to show the operations on fractions using two row tables with some cells merged and with only some borders visible.

There was one student who diligently stayed in the faculty room waiting for me to finish. I had to give him the answers to the first eleven questions so that he could go home, and told him that I would give the rest of the solutions to the photocopier the next day.

That afternoon, when I presented the partial reviewer to the teacher of the other two Trig App classes, that was when he told me that he could not give his students the quiz at the same time as me. This is because he was absent last Monday (and in fact I had to come up with a six-question seatwork for his Trig App class that day, based on the word problems from the first exam - his request).

He was able to meet his Tuesday/Friday class on Oct. 19, whose lesson he had to give to his Monday/Thursday class on Oct. 21. He would discuss the reviewer I gave him to his Friday class on Oct. 22, but he could only discuss it to his Monday class on Oct. 28. And since we decided that quizzes have to be Monday/Tuesday or Thursday/Friday, the earliest he could set the quiz would be Oct. 28 and 29.

Given that I could not finish the reviewer in time for them to study it on Thursday, I decided to postpone my quiz to coincide with his as well.

I'll discuss the mechanics lectures and the classes from Wednesday onwards next time. For now, class dismissed.