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 session of my second Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism laboratory section for the first week of the first term, we started with the analog meter reading of voltage and resistance already, as well as the determination of resistor color codes, since not all of them had brought their alligator clips, wires and solders for the other preliminary hands-on exercise before the set of experiments.

This was after giving them the standard speech about the deadlines for individual reports (with the usual ten percent bonus and deduction per day early or late), the significance of the regular short quizzes (it is the indicator of who is late and who is note) and the conditions for excessive absences (knowing that two late attendances equals one absent) and its relation to automatic failures.

Some of the students, graduates of technical high schools, already knew about the mnemonics for determining the numbers that corresponded to each color.

But most of them had to learn it from scratch, as well as reading the resistance and the voltage with an analog meter, which I tested by having a variable DC power supply and a variable resistor whose values I just adjusted so that different students would read different measurements.

In fact even some of the graduates of the technical high schools, being used to the digital meters, or because they admitted that they only passed their electronics classes based on a few skills such as soldering or knowing how to etch printed circuit boards, but did not enough theoretical background to “wing” the rest of the required things to learn.

I also taught them how to try and read a voltage or a resistance whose value was unknown, that they have to start with the largest range then work their way downwards, making sure that the pointer does not slam to the left (for resistance) or the right (for voltage) which means that it is beyond the set range, and should be adjusted back quickly or risk damaging the meter’s pointer mechanism.

I will teach them the other use of the resistance measurement in the meter when they finish their alligator connectors.

Session 1139 has zero volts. Class dismissed.