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 second meeting of my Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism lecture class for the second week of classes, I had just one example to them on the electrostatic forces in two dimensions for four particles, after I explained to them that the quantization of electric charge means that all values of electric charge are all integer factors of the basic value of the electron or the proton, which have the same numeric value anyway.

It was also sad to see that trying to use the old TV show "Quantum Leap" to lead in to the well known terms of quantum mechanics, that the students, mostly born in the late eighties, just returned blank stares to me, signifying that they had absolutely no idea what science fiction program I was talking about.

From there I went to continuous charge distributions, teaching them the linear charge density or charge per unit length represented by the Greek letter lambda, before showing them the equation used when dealing with how a uniformly charged rod or ring affects a particle located centrally above it.

In the lab class immediately afterwards, the students finally brought the materials required for their soldering exercise.

Everyone was able to practice soldering the alligator clip connectors that they will be using for the experiments for the rest of the term, and I was able to check them all for connectivity.

For my Mathematical Methods One class where we had their first quiz, I was surprised to see that there were some students who passed their papers soon after the first one third of the period.

I know that there were very few topics included, but I thought I had put in enough items to take them at least half the class time.

Talk about a brutal reminder that I am handling the "honor" section.

Session 1151 passed its paper immediately. Class dismissed.