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 Engineering Materials Science class, composed of the junior students who have become very familiar with me.

I gave them examples of directions using simply the base of the hexagonal solid, for which the two axes had an angle of 120 degrees.

I showed them how to get the coordinate indices of any vector along that plane, simply applying the rules of graphical vector addition they learned in their mechanics lab class.

Now, it may have been incomprehensible to some of the students, but the thing was, when I was asking for input while answering the items on the board, there were people answering.

And the class was quiet when I asked if there was any question about the current topic (one deterrent to Deiv, who always inevitably needs a clarification on either the previous topic that he is still copying, or the next topic he is copying ahead - instead of focusing on what I am discussing, leading to more questions on his part; it's a vicious cycle), there was silence. The students who did not understand completely probably had the same idea I did, which was that they could ask their classmates who were clear on the topic.

But is that necessarily a good thing that they don't voice their level of clarity to the teacher, who won't proceed otherwise?

Looking at the vectors in the hexagonal plane with the same indices, the students agreed that they were not equivalent, proving the "shortcut" rule for cubics did not apply to hexagons.

From there we went to a new indexing for with the rule of equivalence did apply, converting the three numbers into four for hexagons.

And when we tried this out for the vectors in the hexagonal plane which were equivalent, the same indices appeared, proving the rule.

Session 1187 was not listening to the current topic. Class dismissed.