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

In the last Advanced Mathematics lecture that I had for the term (which makes it thirteenth week of classes) I showed them how to get the non-sinusoidal and non exponential signal graphs in the spreadsheet software.

This, of course, uses the inherent conditional statement in the software, which they can repeat – or “nest” several times.

We started out with the simple square wave, which, based on the sinusoidal wave again, just gets a positive one value along the y or dependent variable axis when the sine is positive, and a negative one value when the sine is negative.

From there we tried the several conditional statements, using it on the function that we graphed manually during our last classroom (not computer lab) session, and we were able to make the same drawing they had in class come out.

Of course, there were minor differences that were attributed to the interval that we used, such as not getting the specific peak as in the manual graph.

This was easily remedied by changing either the minimum and/or maximum value though. The new interval was computed that put an exact value at the peaks of the graph.

Afterwards, I had them solve for and display on the computer the conditional statements surrounding the modified ramp function and the single sine wave samples we had from the book.

I am still thinking if our final exam is going to be hands on or written. I have enough time to mull it over.

For the last lecture session in my mechanics lecture classes, we took up both the conservation of mechanical energy and the conservation of linear momentum.

I used the same examples we had in freely falling bodies and projectile motion for the first topic, just to show them that the answers could be the same. But I did show them that there were other problems that can be solved using the equations for energy that cannot be solved through projectile, such as when the angle of the initial velocity of the projectile is not given.

I did emphasize to them the fact that no other external forces act on the entire system, which makes it applicable not only for projectiles but also for frictionless inclined surfaces.

For linear momentum, we only took up motion in one dimension, which for once thwarted the billiard analogy.

But I believe it was sufficiently difficult for them because of double the number of masses and four times the number of velocities involved from our previous discussions.

The same goes again with using the solution of linear equations in two variables, with which they should be very familiar by now.

I’ll talk about the last two days before finals next time. For now, class dismissed.