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

Fourth week of classes, third trimester, school year 2004-5: I had quizzes in both of my Engineering sophomore sections, Advanced Mathematics and Electromagnetic Theory.

I even asked the students when they wanted to have the tests and, of course, they opted for the later sessions of the week.

Obviously, the earlier meetings in the week were designated for review, although the consensus seems to be that the students are still taking it easy – as evidenced by their having difficulty with the easier concepts in the quizzes, such as vector addition and ones that they already know will be time-consuming, like matrix multiplication.

One of the students, in fact, asked if in the future we will be holding those exams like they do in other subjects that start at four pm and end as late as eight pm.

I shook my head though, because I definitely design my tests to be finished in one and a half hours, and in fact have been by those who have prepared for them.

On to the Innovation Week presentations, there were two and a half submissions on Friday morning before we left for the camp.

One was the electromagnetic loop proposed by that failing student last term. This project was better set up because the magnets were attached to the sides of a box, the same with the two large clips into whose holes the free spinning loop of wire was hung.

The two clips were the ones that were connected to the battery, placed inside the box of a snack drawn in the shape of a well-known cartoon character, so that the spinning seemed to be powered by the creature’s brain.

The loop only had to be given a slight push and it would keep turning until the battery ran down and had to be recharged.

From the same pair of students was another exhibit of the multi-ball pendulum, which they did not consult on, because I would have told them that we already have such a demonstration, made from the same billiard ball key chains as the second one.

This new display, in fact, was not only not as aligned (and swung for a shorter amount of time) than the first one, but was only a loaner and would be returned at the end of the week.

The “half” submission is termed as such because it is more of a live presentation than a stand-alone showcase. These include the two forks balanced on a toothpick and how to get a whole unshelled hard-boiled egg into a bottle whose mouth is of a slightly smaller diameter. Except that instead of an egg, the student used a water balloon in latex a bit smaller than the egg because the mouth of the glass bottle he used was also smaller in size.

Since the student already used a bottle and matches, I told the student to add just a few more materials for an extra presentation.

I’ll talk about the others next time. For now, class dismissed.