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

First meetings for the fifth week of classes, third trimester, Advanced Mathematics continued: Since it would be tedious to make the students solve for the inverse of a three by three matrix by making nine equations in nine unknowns, I told them about the alternative method for getting the inverse, which requires the original matrix’s determinant and adjoint.

I had to explain to them how to get the adjoint, which uses the co-factor (required for getting the determinant of higher-order matrices) in transposed positions.

We tried it out with the two by two matrix I showed them earlier in the lecture, and we got the same answer, after we remembered that the co-factors follow a rule of signs given by the addition of the row and the column number.

Since their exercise took so long, I told them that getting the inverse of a three by three matrix will have to wait until our next meeting.

Mechanics lecture, first meeting, fifth week: I announced to them about the first long (hundred point) exam, which will be on Friday, February 11. The coverage is everything from the start up to Forces in One Dimension, our topic for that day.

We started with Newton’s Three Laws of Motion*, and from there, concentrated on Forces (definition, unit and related equations).

I gave them the easiest scenario of having only one force, therefore not having to worry about summations.

For two or more forces, I introduced the free body diagram and I gave them several examples from both possibilities: where the forces are given and they have to get either the time, displacement, initial or final velocity from the acceleration; and where they have to get one of the forces from the other quantities given, again after obtaining the acceleration.

I emphasized the direction of forces, acceleration, velocity and displacement for one dimension, which could be confusing when getting summation of forces.

We will have a review (and a surprise recitation) for the next meeting.

In the faculty meeting we had in the afternoon, one of the major points discussed was the agreement of holding the Innovation Week every term, which is more sustaining than one of the suggestions to hold another one towards the end of this term.

Maybe we should announce it this early.

I am against having a certain theme per term though (since they noticed this time it seemed to be “water”), because it would limit the students’ originality, and those who have ideas not in the theme would be discouraged to join.

That’s it for today. Class dismissed.

*I told them that just being able to write those down (with all the keywords intact) would already garner them nine points in the exam. Talk about handing them the keys to the kingdom.