Realm of the Imponderable

Summer's over

And yeah, I have been lazing around way too much these days.
So I spent most of my time playing with my devilstick (And apparently it shows, the people in the Ann Arbor Juggling Club said my dual devilstick props improved alot since 3 months ago) and plaing WoW. And the last 2 weeks bringing James around Singapore and feeding him all the local cuisine that Singapore has to offer.

I also took up a short 2 week relief teaching stint in ACJC, which I found quite interesting. One of their physics teachers got summoned for his annual 2 weeks of reservist training (which is basically 2 weeks of being excused from having to use your brain), so I got roped in to take over his classes. It's interesting being on the other side of the classroom, the classroom that I remember from 6 years ago when I was a student there. And it's a challenge, trying to get students interested in what I'm teaching, especially when most of them are only interested in getting the grade for their physics exams, not necessarily in learning what goes on. Truth be told, I didn't go really deep into the details. If it's the mindset of the teachers to get the students to pass the exams and not teach the students about physics, what can I do?

I flashed out a question on how to apply the stuff that they were learning about magnetic fields. It was a simple problem, something that had been determined decades ago: how to optimize the performance of a DC motor. You'd have an idea if you just took one of those things apart. But maybe they hadn't been exposed to this sort of question before, or they were simply unprepared for these weird physics question where there's no definate right or wrong answer. I wanted them to realise that physics wasn't just about learning how magnetic fields work just for the sake of learning, that even simple concepts, when applied correctly, can give rise to amazingly complex machines. I hope that I at least got through to a handful of them.

So now I'm back in Michigan, waiting to start on another gruelling year of lectures, homework and actually thinking. All for one piece of paper that says "I am a master of mechanical engineering; I know more than joo!" Well, ok that's not entirely true, but I at least know more about something than you.

So my dears, this concludes another random update on my life, the contents of which, unfortunately, are not as random as the time at which I chose to put them down