The Academics Thread

[Bazza]

Trick question, everyone knows Q is a Continuum. 

[Pariah]

This is just basic algebra. Quantum mechanics will be a year or two off, yet.

[Bazza]

No slap for a star trek joke? 

[Cancer]

I have given an assignment sending students to the JPL Small Body Database, where they can look at orbits, examine the orbital elements for asteroids and comets, and so on.  It has a pretty good little interface for visualizing orbits in the Solar System, and the graphics are not Java-based.

 

After a couple of warm-up exercises (mostly designed to get them used to manipulating the display, and recognizing the information presented by the page), I direct them to email the instructor asking for their "three personal objects" and then answer questions for each of those objects.  This is at the very end of the assignment.

 

(Digression: the "personal objects" always include one Near Earth Object, some of which get rather spookily close to Earth; one Trans-Neptunian Object; and one periodic comet.  And yes, everyone gets a different trio, which insures that no one can get away with copying someone else's paper.)

 

Entirely unintended when I created the assignment, and it is now a source of some amusement, it also serves as a procrastination detector.  I assigned this two weeks ago, and it comes due before this weekend.  So far only 21 of 29 students in the class have emailed to ask for their personal objects.  I frankly wonder how many students -- used to leaving things untouched for as long as possible and then doing assignments the night before the due date -- have an "Oh S--t" moment when they get to the last page of a 7-page PDF and only then get to the direction, "Email the instructor and ask for your personal objects."  In no way did I plan for this to happen when I created the assignment, but right now I think it's pretty funny, in my habitual Dr. Satan sort of way.

 

EDIT (9:00 PM the following evening): four students have requested their personal objects in the last 90 minutes.  But, we're up to 27 out of 29 having made that request at this time.

[Cancer]

... even if you chew off a hind leg to avoid it

[Bazza]

For any person -- like me -- who is interested: An early version of the "two cultures" ie the class of science with the arts & humanities.

 

T. H. Huxley, "SCIENCE AND CULTURE" An Address delivered at the Opening of Sir Josiah Mason’s Science College, at Birmingham, on the 1st of October 1880.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/52344/52344-h/52344-h.htm

 

The response: "Literature and Science1" by Matthew Arnold, ie his famous Rede Lecture, given at Cambridge University, in 1882 
https://mathcs.clarku.edu/huxley/comm/19th/Arnold.html

[Cancer]

What does a Real Physicist do while confined to home due to the virus?

 

She builds a Bose-Einstein condensate remotely from home.

 

 

(BTW, the female pronoun there is not gratuitous.)

[Cancer]

this fall ....

 

Might go in the COVID thread, too.

[Old Man]

[Cancer]

https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2004 MX2;old=0;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=1#orb

 

[Old Man]

Seven years late!

[Starlord]

It comes less than 2,500,000km distance in the year 2050.

 

PS:  In the game Civilization, 2050 is the final year of play.

[Old Man]

2050 seems kind of generous nowadays.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

12 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

You don't need calculus for that. That's what P.E. is for. 

[Badger]

Depended on the sport for me.

 

Naturally the teacher aimed for the bad ones.

 

I was a tactical genius in dodgeball.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Cancer]

I have said in this forum before: the only kind of teacher who regularly gives tests they themselves can't pass are Phys Ed teachers.

[Ternaugh]

10 minutes ago, Badger said:

Depended on the sport for me.

 

Naturally the teacher aimed for the bad ones.

 

I was a tactical genius in dodgeball.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball."

[Cancer]

Last day of classes was Monday.  Not giving exams.  I have a backlog of assignments to grade, but course grades aren't due for a week.  Decompression is in order.  And thinking about how to modify some assignments for next fall, but that has an even longer time horizon.

[Pariah]

Our district implemented a grading policy for 4th quarter where traditional grades were converted to one of three outcomes: A (4.0), P for passing, and I for incomplete. In other words, if you earned an A, you got an A on your report card. If you earned an A- to a D-, you got a passing grade that didn't impact your GPA one way or the other. And if you earned an F, you got an Incomplete and an opportunity to make it up by the end of the first academic quarter of Fall 2020.

 

The district sent out numerous emails about this policy and how it would work, specifically the bit about making up an incomplete. Our principal send out several emails, outlining how to make up an incomplete for a passing grade. And on my Canvas page for each of my classes, I explained in detail what you would need to do if you ended up with an Incomplete and wanted a passing grade instead.

 

So naturally yesterday one of my students, who did precisely nothing during Q4's distance learning experience--completed no assignments, sent no messages, participated in no online class discussions, zip, zilch, nada--e-mailed me and asked if there was any way that her Incomplete could be changed to a passing grade.

[Badger]

On 6/8/2020 at 10:32 PM, Ternaugh said:

 

"If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball."

While I was a good Dodger. I didn't need to early in the game.

 

A good use for the weak kids was as shielding.

[Cancer]

Truer labeling was never better exemplified than by the single-line entry "Sports and Exercise Science, BS" in the list of degree programs.

[Pariah]

...with the possible exception of "Political Science, BS".

 

( I know I've mentioned this here before, but in my classes I frequently find myself saying things like, "I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on that because I'm not a political scientist, I'm an actual scientist.")

[Cancer]

Well, I'll give more credit to PoliSci than to SpEx.  PoliSci has been around for a while, there's a real literature, even if it is largely made up of self-adulation for a particular group and denunciation of other groups.  SpEx was not encountered until the ... 1990s? ... or so, purely as a fake degree so scholarship athletes could maintain athletic eligibility.  I've had students of both majors in my classes, and PoliSci's are the usual mixed bag of liberal arts types: some good, some bad, but they can put together a coherent toy essay when it's required.  Almost to the last anthropoid body, the SpEx types have been intellectual basket cases who resist the idea that they should think or do actual lab work.  "When the f*** did you need a college degree to become a playground monitor?" is my opinion of that program.

[Bazza]

3 hours ago, Cancer said:

Truer labeling was never better exemplified than by the single-line entry "Sports and Exercise Science, BS" in the list of degree programs.

 

Disagree. Been under the care of an exercise physiologist. It is an applied health science. 

[Bazza]

2 hours ago, Pariah said:

...with the possible exception of "Political Science, BS".

 

( I know I've mentioned this here before, but in my classes I frequently find myself saying things like, "I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on that because I'm not a political scientist, I'm an actual scientist.")

 

Only because political science —like all social science — has forgotten what it means to be human, ergo it needs the humanities for it to be useful.