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 first lecture class of my Mathematical Methods One section for the entire term, after having divided those who took the diagnostic test and given my class policies, we first talked about the various formats for ranges of values for variables. These are the set notation, the inequality form, the number line and the interval notation.

After giving them several examples, especially of those ranges that are open-ended to the left, the right or both, then we went to one particular application of the last, which is an inequality that has the absolute value symbol.

From there we went to integer exponents of variables and constants, and the principles governing their simplification. I even set aside one part of the board for writing down the rules of simplification as we discussed them, and I suggested they write them down in the back part of their notebook for easy access, and since there would be more added in the future as we got to more advanced topics.

Just like in the my Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism lecture class (my only other lecture for this term) I also told them to bring a notebook for the daily exercises.

This continued in the next session, when we finally split the three sections to the originally planned four, but facilitating their adjustment by making sure that the minimum number of students be displaced. So the original three sections retained three fourths of their students.

For that time I discussed operations with polynomials, from addition to subtraction to multiplication (giving emphasis to the special products and the FOIL method) and starting on division for monomial denominators, telling them that we would leave polynomial denominators for the next meeting.

In the first meeting of my INTRELM lecture class for the second week, I discussed getting the summation of electrostatic forces for more than three particles in one dimension, then to three particles in two dimensions, reminding them about the standard form for the angle-slash-direction, and the means of adding two-dimensional vectors, using the Pythagorean theorem and some trigonometric principles.

Session 1141 moved classes. Class dismissed.