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 general science requirement mechanics lab class for the ninth week of the third term, we had their experiment on the Coefficient of Friction.

This was the one where in the quiz I had some simple yes or no questions. Was the string used in all setups of the experiment? Were the weights used in all setups of the experiment? So the students had a fifty-fifty chance of answering them correctly even while only guessing.

For some reason, several students of two groups also left the room immediately after the quiz, while they were supposed to be borrowing their equipment.

I had waited long enough for them to return and borrow the equipment when two of the groups were already ready, so I just gave my short explanation of the procedure (and the change in the values they were supposed to place as a load on the wooden block) to the two groups, of which one member of one of the absent groups caught the tail end.

But he still was not sufficiently able to tell the rest of the members who trickled in about what they were supposed to do, so they had to rely on their manual and looking at how the other groups performed.

I also had to correct them several times, since they were also mixing up when they were supposed to incline the board, when they were supposed to attach the board to a string over a pulley, and when they were supposed to place some weights on the wooden block.

For some strange reason I have also gotten into the habit of always speaking sharply to what I consider to be my A-1 group (to borrow a phrase one student in another lab class of mine called their own group conceitedly; for this group it means having the least number of underperformers) during the start of the experiment because of some inane questions they tend to ask while I’m explaining briefly the procedure.

They know I’m not really angry, and I know they excel despite their persistence in bad experimental habits. At least I hope they know.

Session 1033 left the lab without asking permission. Class dismissed.