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

Returning to my mechanics lecture finals last Tuesday, at some point one student in particular asked for me to give the mass or the velocity in the problems that involved ratios and elimination. I did as they requested, not that it helped most of them as I found out when I checked their papers.

I also had to give the illustration for the three part separation, just to show that it was possible for two parts to have velocities that are perpendicular.

In this case, as well as in the car collision problem, it seems that playing billiards have already given them the proper instinct as to what the general directions of the objects or masses would be after collision given the initial direction, if not the specific numeric values. I decided to give them half the points for those, provided they also had the correct illustration of course.

I also had to give them the analogy that proving the expressions was just the same as proving the identities we did in Trigonometric Applications (except for one or two who were not allowed by their flowchart to take Trig App, they all were enrolled in that course for this term). Not that anyone was able to answer it either.

And not surprisingly, they took the whole two hours again for their exam.

Tuesday afternoon I also made the exam for the mechanics lab written finals for 8am the next day.

I wrote down seven word problems, one for each experiment, and, with some of the measured quantities given, I asked for some of the computed values, just like what they did in the experiment.

I would have either not given any of the formulas, or given all of them, in no particular order, so that a certain fore-knowledge of the concepts would still have been needed to answer the questions, although probably they had a good chance of guessing.

This, I figured, would show the intrinsic connectivity between the lecture and laboratory topics.

But when I was taking a shower Wednesday morning, I thought of a better type of exam to give for the lab.

I would give sample tables for all of the experiments - and maybe the equations used as well - and they would write down the analysis and conclusions just like in the individual reports.

Unfortunately, I arrived in school thirty minutes before the start of the exam, and I didn't have enough time to create seven tables with numeric values.

I could have moved the start of the exam to thirty minutes later, as I remembered doing with David in the same subject two terms ago, but I decided not to.

Instead I just came up with a similar exam where they were asked for the materials, set up, theory, methodology, sources of error and recommendations for each experiment.

Same as the other exam, I told them that with the three individual reports assigned to them, they were then assured of getting full points in three of the items already, or seventy five out of a hundred.

That is, assuming they have already written their reports, which some of them haven't.

For this exam I told them that remembering the names of the materials was not important, but being able to describe them accurately was enough.

The same was true with being able to write the correct equations in the theory. I told them I would accept being able to state that when a certain (independent) quantity is increased or decreased, that another (dependent) quantity would have their value change also.

I guess I will have to give that other exam next term next year (but still this school year).

There were two people who asked for a make up exam in lecture class, who had a conflict of another exam at the same time. Even though they finished that exam early and I was able to see them in the hall, they still opted not to take the exam at that time, but on Wednesday morning.

There were also three people who did not take the exam in the lab.

One of them, according to his classmates, was already telling them that he was transferring to another school, something they did not know whether to take seriously or not.

Another was skating close to getting a failing grade in the course for excessive absences, and obviously continued his slacking trend.

The other, who took the exam in the afternoon the same with the two who took the special mechanics lecture exam, said he didn't know there was a written finals. He was a new transferree and a non-block student, so I was lenient.

But I'll have to stop here. Class dismissed.