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.

In the meeting of my mechanics lab class for the eleventh week of the second term, we had the sixth experiment, which is on the conservation of mechanical energy.

In the quiz that I gave them at the start of the session, I first asked for them to state the law of conservation of mechanical energy for three points. This was, of course that in a closed system, the sum of the kinetic energy and the potential energy at any point is the same.

Next question was recalling what previous experiment and/or activity used the same set up as the current experiment, for two points each. The answers here are the activity on errors and the experiment on projectile motion.

Finally, I asked what value should be changed for each trial, worth two points. Here they thought that just like in the previous quiz, they had to give specific numbers. I had to give them the hint that the answer was something like “weight”. In fact, it was height – at which the ball is dropped.

Again, no one got perfect, so the prize for getting a perfect score in the next quiz is now a multiplier of four.

There was also one group whose lab notebook I couldn’t find in my cubicle. But when they returned to the college faculty room and asked the college secretary, they were told that it was in my cubicle all along. Anyway, they weren’t getting perfect in the previous experiment because of other things, and not just potential late submission.

One student left the lab room after the quiz, and didn’t return for at least an hour. It turned out he went for a late breakfast. So I told the group that because of that behavior, that will affect the demeanor rate of their group report grade.

This is the experiment where there are two possible set ups given in the manual. So they had to list the materials given in the second set up, which was the only one that was the same as in previous experiments.

For this one they had to get the mass of the ball bearing used to include in the computation, but not the plumb bob (which is needed in an equation from the first set up).

There was also one group, who, instead of getting the midpoint of the three marks they got from the fall of the ball down the ramp, they measured the three points then computer for the average, which is another alternate way of proceeding with the computation.

Only one experiment left in the term. Session 863 left the lab room without permission. Class dismissed.