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 Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism lecture class for the twelfth week of the first term, I gave them some review problems for our fourth exam, on current and DC circuits.

I concentrated on problems about current and current density (and the popular “electron drift speed” because of the most recent “Fast and the Furious” movie sequel) and I also included how to get fractional values of resistances by connecting several integer value resistors in parallel, as we had done in the lab during the galvanometer experiment.

I also asked them if they would like to have our make up classes (for one of the Monday holidays) in a three hour session a few days hence, which would be a perfect time for us to schedule the exam rather than in an hour and a half session. The asked me if I'd give questions commensurate with three hours, and I shot back at them: even if I give just one circuit for series parallel and one circuit for node and loop rule, would they decide to answer that over 1.5 hours or 3?

In the end, they chose the make up session for the exam, just a small sacrifice of waking up early one time on a usually vacant day for them.

On the next meeting, I'd start with the last topic, magnetic fields, included in the finals.

In the laboratory class afterwards, we had the last performance of the magnetic fields experiment.

Some students were pointing out the lack of neatness in the group notebook of the others in a case of “if we can't get a perfect score in the group report, no one else will”. Not really the attitude I was aiming for.

This also brought in a rash of tearing up pages with corrections in their spiral notebook, or even in the non-spiral notebook, although it wasn't as seamless.

Apparently, no one from both classes got the correct answer for all the current on the wire (straight and coiled) which both apply the right hand rule.

Session 1253 drags down others' work. Class dismissed.