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.

I was talking about my first meeting for the entire term with the Engineering Material Science class, that was just passed on to me during the end of third week of the first term, so I only met them this week.

I already knew now that most of the students would be taken for a loop with my lecture - that concentrated on a foreknowledge of some chemistry and geometry in constructing basic crystal lattice structures - so that only the expected analytical minds would be able to answer the questions I posed about portions of spheres in cubes and hexagonal solids, and everyone else was left trying to imagine the microscopic architecture.

Not that I didn't try to make it easy for them. There were some parts that I repeated more than once. Ephraim, though - who I failed in my general science requirement mechanics lab last term, and the only sophomore that I allowed to take the class when he went for academic advising - was looking at me with that "about to cry" look on his face. I don't know if that's a look that he instinctively uses because it got his teachers to pass him in high school - along with that begging tone of voice he uses, but it doesn't work on me, and will certainly not get him very far if he graduates. Then again, that's probably what he's thinking: when he's out of school, he'll use that look and voice to just get enough to live off on everyday, and there's no need for more.

Just like in my other lecture class (Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism) of which there are two common enrollees, I told them to bring filler notebooks for their exercises next meeting, as well as for the assignment they have to solve.

There was also one other assignment I gave them early on in the period, the volume of a hexagonal solid, that we ended up deriving in class because it figured in one of the examples I gave.

I also asked them to form nine groups of three members each - this surprisingly having the same number of students as the Mathematical Methods class I previously handled - and of course a lot of students did not want to be teamed with Deiv.

The groups are to create solid representations of the basic crystal structures.

Session 1167 has no group mates. Class dismissed.