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 lab class on the third day of the twelfth week of classes for the first term of the new school year.

Since we did not have the thick and thin coils of wire recommended in the new manual, I had to revert to the old set ups we used to have for this experiment. So for the last time this term, I gathered them near the whiteboard and told them about the entirely new procedure (but simpler) they were supposed to follow for the experiment.

First was the bar magnets under a piece of paper they were supposed to sprinkle iron filings on. The bits we had were from drill cast off in metal works and mostly in the shape of curls.

I told them to get from construction site sand but no one brought enough of the fine grains, and the rest was too few to get good magnetic field patterns, and was from dirt, so it had blades of dried grass included as well.

For the second part, I told them to run a current from batteries (which do not care for a short circuit like power generators do) and detect the magnetic field created in the bare wires, both straight and coiled.

Out of the four groups that brought wires, the set up of only one was strong enough to deflect the compass pointer.

Just like last year they still had a difficulty with determining the direction of magnetic field and current to form either the left hand rule and the right hand rule, but I suspect that some asked the upperclassmen who already finished with this course.

Afterwards I told them that the next meeting would be a practical exam, and there would still be a written exam during finals week.

On the next day in my Mathematical Methods One section, we took up the definition of the logarithm. And given that log x in base b equals y has the same variables as b raised to y equals x, they could manipulate the two equations to get the value of whatever variable is missing.

I discouraged them from using their calculators for this because most of the models they used and brought only dealt with base 10. I told them we would end there to keep the coverage of their last quiz the next day short.

In my DIFEREQ class, I discussed the last two methods of solving differential equations: substitution suggested by the equation and Bernoulli’s equation, which I told them was the end of the topic and we’d have more examples in the next meeting.

Session 712’s wires are cut here. Class dismissed.