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 first meeting of my Engineering Materials Science class for the tenth week of the first term, we started on Chapter Six of the textbook, which is on the Mechanical Properties of Metals. We didn't finish it though.

I was only able to finish the topic on elastic deformation for metals, something that a lot of the students had already taken up in the Strength of Materials class last term, such as Engineering Stress, Strain, Shear Stress and Strain.

Of course I knew they were going to make the joke that Engineering Stress and strain were things they experienced everyday from their teachers and lessons.

Anyway, we took up the change in length and cross-sectional area when a specimen is either compressed or elongated. There was also the tilt of an otherwise symmetrical cube, and the twisting of a cylinder a certain angle.

I introduced a gaggle of new equations to them, including one for the modulus of elasticity, the shear modulus and Poisson's ratio, for which I gave them another table. This is the first class I've taught that relied on tables so much.

I also asked them for the schedule they wanted for their next exam, which they said they preferred for the third meeting following.

At the same time, there were a few groups (out of the almost a dozen that I assigned) who submitted their projects for Innovation Week, including the new kaleidoscope designs, the wind “socks” and the marble loops.

For the first meeting of my Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism class for the week, we started the discussion on DC circuits, from defining current as the velocity of electrons, current density, conductivity and resistivity, ending with resistance and Ohm's Law.

From there I went to resistors in series and parallel, and I gave relatively complex examples that otherwise they would not have designed in the lab. It was good for one of the lab classes, who had not had that experiment in the lab yet.

Session 1227 can't look up tables. Class dismissed.