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

Returning from the extended Independence Day weekend: just one more detail about my Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism Laboratory class before I proceed to the fourth day of the third week of classes for the first trimester of the new school year.

There were students, who, as usual resisting to any avoidable work, asked why they had to make their own clips when there were enough from last year’s classes. I said it was supposed to teach those who were not familiar about soldering, which they would be do eventually not only in the future lab classes but also probably at their job. I also said that unlike the previous year, there were now two batches that would be using the facilities of the engineering laboratory, so we had to ensure that there would be enough of the most basic and utilized parts for everyone to use.

In the next day’s Mathematical Methods One class, I continued with the word problems for polynomials in one variable and in one degree instead of going into two degrees or quadratic equations. Again it was only when I was in the middle of discussion that I realized two terms ago not all types of word problems were taken up in one week, much less one meeting. It took two weeks, in fact, that even David who lectures faster than me considered.

So besides the general number and perimeter problems that I discussed with them the session before, I went a little more in depth with coin and simple investment problems.

I would have gone straight to wet mixture problems, which had a certain similarity with the simple investment problems, but I left that for the next week given how little response I was getting from the students in the topic even after several examples.

In my Differential Equations class afterwards I proceeded to the reverse of what we took up the previous meetings, which is coming up with a function in two variables given a differential equation of degree one. I first gave them the simplest type, which is the one where the different variables and their derivatives can easily be separated and placed on opposite sides of the equation for easy integration.

I also had to review them on how to get rid of several logarithms in one equation, using the fact that if x is equal to y, then e raised to the x would equal e raised to the y.

Lastly I taught them how it combine all the arbitrary constants from all the integrations into just one for simplicity, using the fact that if a constant is added to another constant, it would be equal to just a third constant.

I’ll talk about my INTROEM lecture class that followed next time, as well as the second quiz I gave in MM1. For now session 620 is done. The class is dismissed.