Last week I had email from a former student who is now a day-job co-worker. The humor she passed along was something I'd seen before, but I got a smile out of it all over again. I share with you here a couple of alleged test items:
This person actually was well on his way to a correct solution to the problem; he correctly calculated the gravitational potential energy of the object at its starting point (mgh), and its elastic potential energy at its stopping point (0.5 * k *x^2). He should simply have equated the two and solved for x. For some reason, he elected to bag the problem instead. I'd have given him a few points' worth of partial credit; he really had most of the work done.
The next person: not so much.
Anyway, here's hoping for correct solutions from my students; and, failing that, I hope to see some funny ones.
3 comments:
56, that's kick ass
pardon my mouth
Oh my gosh, Jim! Happy Birthday to you! And by the way, not many rut dwellers that I know teach physics. And go to Canoga Park Bowl when they're in Los Angeles. Maybe you're not nearly as much of a rut dweller as you think. :)
cheers,
tricia
Craig: I used to have 60 in the fall semesters. Last year, though, someone decided that the lab can only accommodate 28 people at a time before fire codes are broken. Since I have two lab sections, that limits enrollment to 56. Of course, since I'm in the lab too, I guess it's still in violation, since I make 29. Hmmmmm.
Tricia: thank you for the birthday greeting! In terms of ruts, grading the 51st lab report of the weekend feels fairly rut-ish, but I suppose ruts are where you find them (as my old dad, a tool and die maker who despised routine, might have said). If I lived in Los Angeles, the CPB would be a part of my rut. Those of us with the "talent" for it can routine-ize pretty much anything, I'm thinking ...
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