Freshmen Fermions
So this was the first week that we had quizzes in Physics 212 and I noticed something interesting. As the students placed their quizzes on the desk on their way out of the classroom, every single one of them oriented their quizzes the same way! All of them, across all three of my sections, placed them facing up!!
Now, the really scary part was that I found myself attempting to determine what the field they were interacting with was, and what the Hamiltonian that described the interaction was (obviously it has the same form as electron spins in a constant magnetic field). Furthermore, I really wondered how high the temperature in the room would need to be to cause a significant non-zero population of the students to orient their quizzes in the opposite 'quiz state'.
Apologies to any of them that stumble upon this. ;-)
-Tim
Now, the really scary part was that I found myself attempting to determine what the field they were interacting with was, and what the Hamiltonian that described the interaction was (obviously it has the same form as electron spins in a constant magnetic field). Furthermore, I really wondered how high the temperature in the room would need to be to cause a significant non-zero population of the students to orient their quizzes in the opposite 'quiz state'.
Apologies to any of them that stumble upon this. ;-)
-Tim
posted by tjmcardl | 5:22 PM
2 Comments:
If you figure out the variables, let me know. I spend waaay too long orienting quizzes (or worse--scantron exam sheets). My students don't even get them all face up/face down sometimes, let alone top/bottom orientation!
That's true, I ignored some degrees of freedom in my calculations, didn't I? I'm fairly certain that the field is most strongly correlated to engineers as the pre-med students I had in Physics 101 were not so consistent.
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