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.

Yesterday I was talking about my Engineering Materials Science class.

I discussed linear density, then planar density, which are the numerically accurate ways for the students to determine if two directions or planes are equivalent besides being parallel.

After that I talked about the characteristic of crystals to have different property values (like real estate) in different crystallographic directions. I asked them what the opposite was, and they came up with words like equidistant and equilateral, when the word I was looking for was symmetrical.

Lastly we discussed diffraction. This brings up the concept of angles, wavelengths (having the same Greek symbol, lambda, as the linear charge density we are discussing in Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism lecture class - for which two of the students are the same), sine function and Pythagorean theorem for three dimensions.

From there I noticed that we only had time for exercises on the first part of the lecture, even though I was able to give one example on the last part. At least we had finished the chapter.

But even then it turned out they did not understand the concepts of the first part, and kept asking about the basic values they had to plug into the very simple equation given.

That's one drawback of arriving late, as well as those like Deiv who do not listen to the lecture but instead were copying the notes.

I have tried using different boards in random order to throw him off, but now I will have to try a different tactic besides not writing all the important stuff on the board.

Session 1197 kept asking for the board not to erase while he copied. Class dismissed.