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.

Since I already started talking about a certain student the past few days, third time’s the charm in his behavior in my Electromagnetic Theory class recently.

He broke his streak of having perfect exercises by not submitting his exercise notebook two meetings ago.

It was the one where I gave three points and they are supposed to get the area of the triangle enclosed, as well as the vector of direction, which was easy since the points were all in the x-z plane. One method is to get the distances of the points, then use the sine and cosine laws to get the angles.

From the angles they can get the two right triangles that comprise the main polygon, and they can get the height that they can use to get the area.

The second method involves getting the slope of any of the three lines that contain two of the points.

Afterwards they get the slope of the line perpendicular to the first line, and then they can get the equation of the line that passes through the third point.

Next they get the intersection of the two lines they have. Get the distance of this point from the third point of the original triangle and they have the height.

Since the triangle is in the x-z plane, the vector of the plane is in the negative y axis. The direction of the torque was given as being in the z and negative y quadrant.

But knowing that the cross product is supposed to be perpendicular to the plane and the magnetic field, his means there is no direction of magnetic field that can result in that torque.

No one was able to answer that, the solved for the value mathematically and erroneously at that.

A certain student was able to get the correct answer for the area, but most likely from using sources at home. I could give him a grade for that exercise, but there would be deductions, and those deductions are larger for exercises turned into homework than the basic ten percent per day usually implemented.

And the fact that he tried to apologize for his late submission means nothing. I still can’t give him full credit for something someone else may have done outside the campus.

Session 1565 isn’t really sorry. Class dismissed.