Whining

Today's physics lab was two and a half hours. That alone isn't bad. Even the fact that I have another one at 8am on Wednesday that's also two and a half hours long isn't bad. What is bad is the lack of teaching and coherent text of the class, coupled over some over-enthused ideas about group work.

And the lab experiments/worksheets themselves of course. Those were mind boggling.

Example: First thing we did today after getting into groups was "triggering" a heat pack (i.e. one of those re-usable ones). Activity one that we must write down on the board and discuss, I quote: "Observe what it does during the first fe wminutes after triggering. What seems strange about the behavior of the pack?"

I sat there and thought: "You must be kidding me" while my group memembers argued about whether the temperature of the heat pack increased or decreased. They were confusing the definition of heat with temperature (Q vs. T, respectively). (I did try to explain, but as the other three were all talking over each other no one bothered to follow along with the explanation.) Unfortunately, the writer of the text was not in a joking mood. He (and yes, I know for a fact the author is male) is completely serious. By the way, kids, the correct question to "what seems strange" is "it changed into a solid and produced heat."

The heat pack produced heat. What a NOVEL idea.

I tried to be nice. I smiled a lot. I did my best to keep my sarcasm under control and hope I didn't come across to anyone as arrogant. It was all very hard when my group members have just spent ten minutes arguing about something and generally talking over me and then later, have TA pull out the same solution that I suggested ten minutes ago. I tried to be nice. I tried to be helpful. I want to work by myself for the rest of the quarter and I'm pretty sure it's not just because I'm something of a misanthrope.

End whining. Thank you, I feel much better now.