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 discussing my Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism laboratory practical exam session on the third day of the thirteenth week of classes.

I had a small can where I placed eight pieces of folded paper (eight being the easiest and closest to seven – the number of experiments – that a large paper can be folded and cut). Since I only had to use seven draws, I placed an x on the last one but I didn’t actually decide what to do with it until someone drew it, although I had some ideas.

One was that whoever picked that paper would get to draw again, but that is just a waste of time better served by taking out that extra piece. So I just made it that whoever drew that could pick which experiment to have their exam on.

Before everything, I asked the students to read the value on the voltmeter after I had set a specific value on the dc power supply. Then I asked them to read the value of a resistor using the color codes, and finally to verify that value on the ohmmeter, since I just wanted to see if they knew that the scale for resistance is opposite that of voltage or current, even in terms of getting the most accurate reading (it’s down-range for voltage/current, and up-range for resistance).

Of course Deiv again questioned not using the digital meters. I told them that they would eventually use those, but does that mean he would not be able to do his job anymore after graduating if he was confronted with an analog meter instead.

He also complained that in their mechanics lab, they were asked to draw the experiment to report on DAYS before the practical exam, so they could study up on that. And he insisted that their teacher there, Miss Edna, said she patterned it after how I conducted it.

I just told him flat out that she interpreted my procedure wrong. Besides, mechanics lab is a general science course (where students from other disciplines can take it knowing there are no more succeeding subjects), while electricity and magnetism is strictly for engineering majors, where there is much more at stake for their post-requisite courses.

There were about a handful of students who picked the x paper, and all of them chose magnetic field. Not surprising. No formulas, no circuits, no computations.

What’s also new is that I gave some students pieces of paper to draw the series, parallel or loop and node ridden circuits depending on what experiment they drew. They also used that to write down the equations they remembered. I’ll use that again next time.

Session 721 strikes out here. Class dismissed.