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.

I was talking about my Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism lecture class on Kirchhoff’s Rules.

Since there were three nodes, we were supposed to have three equations on the Node Rule. But looking at the equations, third equation was just a merging of the first two. So effectively there were only two equations from that. It meant, since we had five unknown currents, that we had to get three more equations from the Loop Rule to be able to solve for the currents.

I listed down all six loops, but I told them which three loops I decided to use, for no specific reason.

Looking at the five equations we ended up with, my analysis showed (since I did not want to go into five by five matrix determinants) that manipulating three of the equations we would end up with a sixth equation with only three of the currents, the same three currents as in the last two original equations (fourth and fifth). Then we could use three by three determinants.

It turned out that two of the arbitrary directions we gave the currents were opposite the real values.

Afterwards I gave them a group exercise of a four branch two node circuit.

On the next day (second of the tenth week of classes for the first term) in my Mathematical Methods One class, I taught them about how to deal with repeated factors in partial fractions, which is that each degree of that exponent from one to the highest value gets its own denominator. I had taught this the meeting before, but I gave more examples this time around.

I also introduced factors of degree two that are not factorable, then the numerator is not just a constant but two terms, one multiplied to the variable and the next a constant. But just like the day before, I gave the previous type as the exercise and promised more examples for this next time.

I also asked them if they wanted their quiz on the next meeting or the meeting after the day with no classes. They smartly chose the next meeting, when the coverage of the quiz would be less than the day after (since then I would add a new topic on the next meeting).

In Science Fiction Literature class on that same day, another group talked about an Italian short story called “Memory of the World”.

Again there was a debate that raged among the students, this time about whether what the main character did, editing the history of the humans that was being recorded, was moral or not. They somehow skipped over the fact that he wasn’t doing it out of any directives, but in his own subjective power.

Session 694 enters the records here. Class dismissed.