Old Man Posted February 8, 2022 Report Share Posted February 8, 2022 38 minutes ago, Cancer said: Mid-terms tomorrow and Friday (two different classes). Office hour in 35 minutes. Even here at home I can smell the fear. Good to know you still have your sense of smell. 🙂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted February 8, 2022 Report Share Posted February 8, 2022 "Oo-ooh say can you smell? Yes, I smell like hell...." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted February 9, 2022 Report Share Posted February 9, 2022 Hm, I did something I hope I didn't swear several decades back that I'd never do, and that's invoke some obscure trig identities in a homework problem. Namely and to wit, cos( arctan(x) ) = 1 / sqrt(1 + x^2) sin( arctan(x) ) = x / sqrt(1 + x^2) Ah well, I'll just put "Only the north end of a southbound horse would expect students to find these and use them" on the solutions key. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted February 9, 2022 Report Share Posted February 9, 2022 http://smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-12-31 Old Man and Logan D. Hurricanes 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D. Hurricanes Posted February 9, 2022 Report Share Posted February 9, 2022 Diabolical. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D. Hurricanes Posted February 9, 2022 Report Share Posted February 9, 2022 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted February 9, 2022 Report Share Posted February 9, 2022 I learned several years ago that they no longer mention polar coordinates in the freshman calculus series, let alone do calculus in such coordinates. I have never understood why that change was made to the curriculum. There are lots of things that are flat-out painful in Cartesian coordinates that are trivially easy in polar coordinates. Fantastic labor-saver, IMO. But Nooooooooooooo, can't add anything to the toolkit or their poor little brains will explode! Grr. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D. Hurricanes Posted February 9, 2022 Report Share Posted February 9, 2022 Gov DeSantis is well on his way to destroying education in Florida. He already attacked the free speech ability of professors at UF, is working on re-writing history (i.e. you can say there were slaves but not why), and now teachers can be sued for discussing gender identity. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signals support for 'Don't Say Gay' bill Pariah 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pariah Posted February 10, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 10, 2022 Another round of parent-teacher conferences successfully completed. Or at least survived. In a related story: I was talking with one of my fellow teachers yesterday, and she told me that her daughter had had my chemistry class a few years ago. Now she's in college studying biomedical engineering. This teacher told me that whenever her daughter gets stuck on something in chemistry, she pulls out the notebook she kept from my class and looks it up. And that helps her to figure it out. She said her daughter told her, "Every time I have a problem, I get out Mr P's notebook and I can find the answer." For everybody who wonders how or why teachers continue to do what they do in an increasingly hostile cultural environment, this is how and this is why. Tom Cowan, Ternaugh, Logan D. Hurricanes and 2 others 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D. Hurricanes Posted February 11, 2022 Report Share Posted February 11, 2022 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted February 11, 2022 Report Share Posted February 11, 2022 Thing is, in that comic Pig says all the deepest and truest lines. Rat has the truest insight, but Pig has the clearest vision of truth. Logan D. Hurricanes 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starlord Posted February 11, 2022 Report Share Posted February 11, 2022 55 minutes ago, Cancer said: Thing is, in that comic Pig says all the deepest and truest lines. Rat has the truest insight, but Pig has the clearest vision of truth. What a crock of shift.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted February 12, 2022 Report Share Posted February 12, 2022 Busily grading exams and crushing souls today. Well, strictly speaking, it's the prep work for crushing souls later this week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted February 12, 2022 Report Share Posted February 12, 2022 Memo to the file: Putting the hardest question on the exam first seems to enhance the overall demoralization effect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D. Hurricanes Posted February 12, 2022 Report Share Posted February 12, 2022 Dad taught me to always make the last question a gimme so they don't go hang themselves immediately. Pariah 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted February 12, 2022 Report Share Posted February 12, 2022 Meanwhile, this is probably a bad time to say, "My old chatroom handle was Dr. Satan." on the students' Discord server. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D. Hurricanes Posted February 12, 2022 Report Share Posted February 12, 2022 rravenwood, L. Marcus and Pariah 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted February 12, 2022 Report Share Posted February 12, 2022 "Smart" and "common sense" does not necessarily mix well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ternaugh Posted February 13, 2022 Report Share Posted February 13, 2022 The genius, it comes and goes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted February 13, 2022 Report Share Posted February 13, 2022 Like the legibility of the teachers handwriting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted February 13, 2022 Report Share Posted February 13, 2022 Of course, every teacher must from time to time wonder if they could stand up in front of their class and cry, "SPOOOOOOOOOOON!!" and get away with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pariah Posted February 13, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 13, 2022 None of my students are old enough to have any clue what that means, of course. But every once in awhile I get a handful who are probably nerdy enough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted February 13, 2022 Report Share Posted February 13, 2022 Quote 6. Two equal masses hang on a cord from opposite sides of an ideal, frictionless pulley. The two masses are not at the same height: mass U is higher than mass L. Assuming the two masses start at rest, how will they move once they are released, if they move at all? Explain in terms of Newton's Laws of Motion. This seems to have overthrown a rather large portion of the class. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ternaugh Posted February 13, 2022 Report Share Posted February 13, 2022 1 hour ago, Cancer said: This seems to have overthrown a rather large portion of the class. Assuming that the mass of the cord is negligible, then I'd say that Newton's Third Law would be the relevant case. The downward force on U by gravity would be countered by the downward force on L by gravity. Since the two masses are equal, start at rest, and are both experiencing the same acceleration, there wouldn't be any movement in the two masses, because the forces on the two masses oppose each other equally. Mind you, it's been about 30 years since my last college Physics course, so I may be a bit rusty. Pariah 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted February 13, 2022 Report Share Posted February 13, 2022 No, you get full points there. My students ... not so much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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