Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

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

On the second day of the eighth week of classes I held my second major exam for my Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism lecture students.

There were deceptively six items in the test, but one of the items asked for the flux on each face of a Gaussian cube in an electric field, as well as the total flux, so that’s like seven items in one question, although there are shortcuts for getting certain fluxes, and if they recalled the examples we had, the total flux with no charge enclosed is always zero.

Another item, with a particle a given distance above a conducting plate of a certain area, actually had three different scenarios. First was when there was no charge on the plate, and they had to treat it as a Gaussian surface to compute for the flux.

Second was when there was a charge on the plate, and it helps suspend the particle in place. They were supposed to get the exact charge that would not make the particle fall or fly off above the plate.

For the third the particle is still suspended, but now there is an additional plate above the first one (and the particle) where the only information given is that the charge (and electric field) of the second one is half that of the first (with the same sign). They are supposed to get the new electric field on the lower plate, knowing that the total electric field is still the same acting on the particle.

As usual, despite the fact that I had patterned the problems after the assignment I gave them in the last meeting, they were still having difficulties. I continually attribute this to their inappropriate sense of intimidation in the subject.

On a side note, Deiv, not for the first time in all this time that he has been by student, asked to be excused because he did not feel well. I told him to get a certification from the clinic, that he could just pass on the next day. He still left his things though, and came back for them after going to the clinic. Since I still gave him the test questions as his problem set, I will be giving him a new and more difficult set of items for his make up test.

On the next day in my Mathematical Methods One class, I started with systems of equations in three variables of degree one. It was relatively easy because it dealt with concepts already taken up. The methods for solving them were the same as the previous topic, except, as I like telling the students at this point in the course, graphical method because it would require a three dimensional piece of paper. We took up two of the three methods, elimination and substitution method, and I gave them several examples, including those where some of the coefficients are zero.

And it is at this point that I place the seal on the cap of session 643. Class dismissed.