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

*Just to clarify why I’m talking about the middle of one week of classes on a Monday, that’s because this term did NOT start on a Monday.

Second meeting of my Electromagnetic Theory class, seventh week of classes, third term of the school year: first, I gave them the answer to their exercise that morning.

As I said before, they had the correct idea that the potential for the rod was zero, but I wanted them to show it with equations.

One part of the rod was integrated from –L/2 to zero, while the other part was from zero to L/2. Just because the first part had a positive charge while the other part had a negative charge did not mean that the limits, when substituted to the solved integral, would cancel out.

In fact, they had the same sign. So those equated to zero were both positive. Another was the natural logarithm of –L/2 while its “counterpart” was the logarithm of L/2, which would NOT cancel out.

If they had extended the computation though, they would have noticed that it was the difference of two squares where all the terms canceled to zero when added or one when divided, which ended up being the logarithm of one, also zero.

In another topic, I showed them based on two examples that the potential between two points is not dependent on the path. Integrating based on a straight path and a “roundabout” path yielded the same value.

Lastly, we also discussed how to get the electric field given the potential, the opposite of what we took up in the morning. This did not use the integral, but partial differentiation.

What’s strange is that my cousin has not yet taken this up, because this is in Differential Equations. He seemed to be able to comprehend easily just based on my explanation and that of his classmates.

I also had to familiarize them once more with equipotential surfaces, which we first took up two terms ago.

I gave them two exercises, one for the potential and one for the electric field, again solved by group, but they were only able to finish the one for the electric field. This is because the first problem needed them to integrate for two points. So I just gave it to them as an assignment.

Advanced Mathematics, first session, seventh week of classes: we finished the classifications of signals – deterministic or random and energy or power, both of which are tangentially mathematical.

Afterwards I showed them the different basic operations on the dependent and the independent variable. For the first there was amplitude scaling, addition, multiplication, differentiation and integration. I was able to give specific electronic examples, such as amplification, live band recording, amplitude modulation, an inductor circuit and a capacitor circuit.

I’ll continue on this next time. For now, class dismissed.