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

Before I continue I would just like to clarify the footnote from the last post.

Roland failed in Electric Circuits 1, so he cannot take the post requisite Electromagnetic Theory class. But he has passed Differential Equations, so he can take Advanced Mathematics. My cousin, who transferred at the start of the third term last year, has the opposite case of not having taken Differential Equations but passed Electric Circuits 1.

Returning to my discussion of my mechanics lecture class, as much as possible I try to structure the grading system so that there will be no point before the finals where the student can calculate, or I will have to show him, that he can no longer pass the course no matter what his score is in the finals.

So when some concerned students who have obviously not put out their best effort approach me to ask if they can still pass despite having low grades, I always answer yes.

Other students with the same concern but with a different tactic instead asked how many exams we had left in the term.

Lastly, I will have to come up with examples where the summation of vectors (forces or displacement) is already given and they have to find the magnitude, direction or both of one of the addends.

As for the change in schedule of some events, this is due to the twenty-fifth (Friday) being declared as a public holiday. This means that the Band Fest cannot be held on that day, and neither with the Student Council election.

Both have therefore been moved to the twenty-fourth (Thursday). The last day of campaigning, which coincides with the Candidates’ Presentation of Platforms, now falls on Tuesday the twenty-second, also because of a conflict of reservation for the covered court on Wednesday the twenty-third.

The seventh week of classes started with my Electromagnetic Theory lectures. I showed them the integral equation for Gauss’ Law, and gave them problem-solving techniques or tactics (tactiques?) about choosing the best Gaussian surface to get the electric flux. This is a sphere with the charge at the center because it simplifies the angle for the dot product of the electric field with the area to zero, the electric field is also constant a fixed radius from the charge, and the area just integrates down to four times pi times the radius.

Then we proceeded to the equations for the electric potential, which involved integration on along a path again. Same with computing for the potential at a point some distance from a continuous charge, for which I gave two examples: a straight rod and a charged disk.

After that I gave them a short exercise about a half-positive half-negative rod that they surmised to have a potential of zero, but they could not prove it mathematically.

And that ended the morning session. Next week I’ll talk about the afternoon session, and the first meetings of my Advanced Math and mechanics lecture classes for the seventh week, as well as today’s Open Campus. We’re done for now, pupils.