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.

Just a few more details about my last Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism lecture class for the term, held on the fourth day of the thirteenth week of the first term: for the last example that I gave, I asked the students to go to the board for the different parts of the solution, knowing that when the point being solved for is along the axis of one of the straight wires, the magnetic field at that point is zero.

It also didn’t help that Deiv was continually asking how many more examples we had before the class ended. It was all I could do not to snap back at him and tell him that if he was so eager to leave he could go at that point, and if his classmates were still interested in more examples that went beyond the end of the period, that was their opportunity.

It was also during this session that I asked the students for their preferences as to their third individual report in the laboratory subject, which will be oral and not written.

Since there were only twenty students, and there were seven experiments, I gave a limit of only three students signing up for any particular topic to ensure that all the topics would be covered.

The only rule for picking the experiment was that they should not make a report on the same experiment they have already been assigned a written report for (hedging the technicality that there were some students who have not yet passed any reports at all).

I also emphasized no complete voiceovers, which means that for most of the fifteen minute time limit, the student should be visible and talking. Showing the materials and set up was not required, but graphics and special video effects are allowed.

Lastly, I said that their report should be so simple that even a high school student (there are many around I could ask) could understand it, and they were to use their group’s data on that experiment.

Not surprisingly, the first topic to be filled out was Magnetic Fields, followed by Ohm’s Law, Resistors in Series and in Parallel, and Kirchhoff’s Rules.

I understood why the students had an aversion to Galvanometer Construction, being relatively the most difficult concepts given in the lab, but I was surprised that the students also avoided EMF, Terminal Voltage and Internal Resistance, when, by the virtue of being the second experiment, it was one of the easiest subjects as well. In fact, it ended up being the topic with only two reporters picking it.

The deadline I gave for the report’s submission is the last day of finals.

Session 725 reaches its deadline here. Class dismissed.