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.

One last thing about my Engineering Material Science class before I move on to my next sessions: I was dreading that it includes some of the irregular students that I was relieved aren't my students anymore in the Electric Circuits One lab class, but I saw that it also has the regular students enrolled, probably the only time in more than a year that they have been in one class, since the irregulars started failing pre-requisite majors.

Besides, I'm hoping they have more reason to shape up and put in more effort during a big lecture class with some academic achievers (and dean's list awardees) than during the small petitioned lecture class I last taught them, or in a laid back lab class.

In the first meeting of my Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism lecture class for the fourth week of the first term, we finished off the first chapter of the coverage, the topic being conservation of charge, much like that of momentum or mechanical energy that they took up in the previous term, in that total initial quantity is the same as total final quantity in a closed system. I decided to take this up instead of the next chapter as I had originally planned because there are two particular examples of this in the textbook that I thought would benefit the students in knowing.

I gave the scenarios of when the initial charges are not equal and have the same sign, when they are equal and have opposite signs (where everything negates or cancels out) and when the charges are not equal and opposite in sign - how the final charges are computed somewhat similarly from each case.

Since the examples I gave needed coming up with several equation with two variables each, and using substitution to end up with one variable, it was somewhat complicated and slow going and I was getting no reactions from the students - not even complaints.

When we finished with the examples though there was only enough time for an exercise and I had to shelf the next chapter for the next meeting.

For the lab class immediately afterwards, there were still some groups who hadn't brought the materials for their project, some who were only going to buy them at that time, and one group who only found out then about what their project was.

And their deadline is just one week hence. Not the best attitude to show.

Session 1169 are slow going on their project. Class dismissed.