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 two sessions of (now) my Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism class for the thirteenth week of the second term, I gave them several examples of what the questions in the written finals will be like.

For resistors in series and parallel, I gave them one circuit made up of two squares, one of which has a diagonal. This, they had to redraw to be clear as to what resistors are in series and what are in parallel with respect to the single voltage source, then apply the reduction of resistors.

This was done using just formulas, with no numeric values, and ended with one equivalent resistor connected to the voltage source in the final drawing.

By changing the position of the voltage source to somewhere else in the drawing, there was another relationship of series and parallel resistors seen.

This one, after reducing the resistors, we retraced using the value of the voltage given, so that the voltages and currents across each component was determined.

Ohm’s Law came into play, as well as relation of voltages and currents in series and in parallel, with are either equal or summed up.

I told them that for the Node/Current and Loop/Voltage Rules, they would have to answer the same types of questions: some “theoretical” identifying only the nodes, the currents, the loops and the equations, and at least one question where they have to solve it to the end either by determinants or by substitution of equations down to one variable.

Afterwards I also recalled for them the right hand rule of the relationship between current in either a straight wire or a coil and the magnetic field it produces, which they have to say is in what compass direction either above or below the wire, and inside the coil.

For this part at least, there were no computations to be made, or vectors to be drawn in three-dimensional space.

Session 1439 wished for a smaller coverage in the second take of the subject. Class dismissed.