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 fourth day of the thirteenth week of classes in my second to the last meeting for my Mathematical Methods One students, we had board work recitation that was also their review for the final exam on the succeeding week.

For the first questions I asked for volunteers, already giving them the hint that those are the relatively easier topics. There were some students though who by that time had forgotten how we had solved those problems and questions earlier in the term, although I did tell them that they could bring their notes to the board.

It was not much help to ask their classmates, whose recollection of the same discussions were also vague.

For the questions to the board work, I used the comprehensive exam (not the finals)that David and I had for the same subject two terms ago, skipping the topics about inequalities and absolute value (although in retrospect, I should have retained the second one).

There were no word problems in that exam though, and only one problem dealt with quadratic equations, so for the next meeting, I said we would have more of the same, dealing with those students who did not get called that time (there were about a dozen of them).

In my DIFEREQ class afterwards, we also had review problems. But this time I concentrated on differential equations that could be solve by more than one of the eight methods we had covered in class, and there was an added hint that every time someone found out one of the methods used, I asked them to write it on the board for their classmates’ edification.

This was also to be worked on by groups of four members each. I told them that they were supposed to pass by the end of the period just one solution for each of the four numbers, and the rest should be submitted by the next week, which should be easy given that all they had to do was verify the answer already obtained the first time.

Afterwards, in my last Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism lecture class for the term, unlike in the first two classes, here I gave them more examples for the magnetic field, particularly for the straight wire, the circular arc and the two or more parallel wires. For the first two, the magnetic field is just one-dimensional: either going in the board or out of it, while for the parallel wires it was two-dimensional and had to use the component method of vector addition, which I warned them they should be very versed with already by now. I ended with an example of a circuit with a wire that was at several points straight and at some points curved, and they had to get the total magnetic field at one point.

Session 723 loses all dimension here. Class dismissed.