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 ninth week of the first term, we had our third long exam.

The coverage was Gauss' Law and Potential, two chapters, instead of one chapter each for the previous two exams. Unlike the last two exams, which had some questions that were more weighted than the others, this one had six items that were all twenty points each, 120 in total.

The first asked for the flux through each face of a Gaussian cube with an electric field expressed as two axial vectors. This was direct from an example we had in class. The second asked for an expression for the electric field of an infinite uniformly charged rod given the Gaussian surface as a cylinder in terms of dimensions L and R.

Third required the total work done to bring four electrons from infinity to the corners of a square whose sides are given, again lifted from a problem we solved in the lecture. Fourth asked for the change in electric potential energy needed to move an electron between the ground and a storm cloud given the potential difference of the two locations.

Fifth was to look for the distance from an infinite plate where the parallel surface with equal potential is 50 volts. Last was to find the distance along the axis of a charged disk where the potential is a third of the value at a tenth of the disk's radius. These two were again similar to some cases that we answers during a previous session.

It was still disappointing then, to see a lot of them complaining that the test was difficult.

I would conclude that it was still because they didn't study, partly due to the fact that the formulas were given, they thought they could wing it. This is again despite my warning to them that any additional information about the formulas will not be provided and must be reviewed.

There's also the reputation of the subject to consider, that they may still be deathly afraid of the concepts. The only solution I can think of now is to give them more examples.

Session 1219 is irrationally fearful of the subject. Class dismissed.