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

Today was the first day of classes. I’ll give a brief recap of the events that happened today before continuing with my account of the science and outdoor camp.

My Mathematical Methods 1 class, composed of all freshmen, is full, some of who were attendees of the science and outdoor camp. Unfortunately because of the recent (just last Saturday) move from the second floor offices to the third floor offices with even the computer systems not having been fully reinstalled – as well as the institutional workshop just having been concluded two days before - we could not print out and distribute the syllabi.

Ditto with my first introduction to electricity and magnetism class. Because of the turnout in the Differential Equations classes, where one section had all of the students who could enroll in that course while the other had none, I assumed that the same would occur with my second INELMAG class. I was right.

More details on that when I have finished with the science and outdoor camp and the school wide workshop.

The first activity for the evening of the camp after dinner was the astronomy lecture. I told them of what my procedure had been when I started years before, lecturing to high school students most of whom did not have computer access. But because they were not only incoming college students but also assuredly had their own PCs at home, I just introduced them to how to recognize the constellations based on the software, as well as how to manipulate the software to show the movement of the stars in the sky and the other celestial objects, for instance during an eclipse.

After this we viewed one of my favorite science fiction movies, “Contact” directed by Robert Zemeckis based on a novel by Carl Sagan.

I gave the facilitators assigned to that session (from the student leadership camp) the same guide questions that I used to give my astronomy class students before, and injected some philosophical and religious undertones as the Dean had suggested.

Unfortunately it rained at that point, so the evening stargazing and bonfire was cancelled.

The 4am session pushed through though, where they were able to see Mars, Sagittarius, Scorpius, Aquila, the Northern Cross in Cygnus, Lyra and the Summer Triangle, which included the star Vega from the movie they watched that evening.
In retrospect I should have scheduled it for at least half an hour earlier because even that early some of the stars were already a bit difficult to see in the coming dawn.

After breakfast we had the river trek, which despite the downpour the night before, pushed through.

Despite our best efforts though, some of the students got wetter than we expected, and it was still a big job for the janitors to mop up after us. This is especially since there were some who used the rest room to wash up instead of the showers, which they claimed were too far away and too few.

Session number 602 ends here. I’ll continue with that tale tomorrow. For now, class dismissed.