> Do you have any idea how hard it is to solder wires to germanium?
Has science gone too far? :D
Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)
271–280 of 429 posts
Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just wait until that teacher is your graduate advisor.
I hear so many horror stories in the sciences, I have no idea why anyone would pursue an academic career in it.
At this point it’s the track to get a visa to work and live in the US. I’ve met so many graduate researchers who put up with way more bullshit than I would ever deal with. And why most grad programs are mostly immigrants.
Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)
#273One of my Core Memories when it comes to science, science education, and education in general was in my high school physics class, where we had to do an experiment to determine the gravitational acceleration of Earth. This was done via the following mechanism: Roll a ball off of a standard classroom table. Use a 1990s wristwatch's stopwatch mechanism to start the clock when the ball rolls of the table. Stop the stopw…
This is, more or less, exactly what happened when I took Electronics I in college. The course was structured in such a way that you could not move on to the next lab assignment until you completed the one before it. You could complete the lab assignments at your own pace. If you failed the lab, you failed the class, regardless of your grade. The second or third lab had us characterize the response of a transistor in…
This is crazy to me because when I've run labs in the past, there were equipment failures literally all of the time. When you teach lots of people, shit breaks. Quite often if something didn't work, I'd just have one student swap equipment with another student to help diagnose this sort of thing.
Major bummer that others have had differing experiences from me, here.
Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
As bad as the prior story is, I don't know if intentionally misleading the students is the right way either— what if one had realized the contamination and acting in good faith had cleaned out the bottle? What if they did this afterward and ended up redoing the experiment only to be told they had cheated? I'm all for exposing students to something unknown, but telling them they're doing X when it's really Y for anyth…
You can square that circle by announcing at the beginning of the course that there is going to be some assignment like that, but I'm not telling you which, because the real world doesn't. I do agree this is a good point; trust is not something that should be simply squandered. Nevertheless, this is still a lesson that needs to be taught and so often students make it to the end without a single teacher that did.
This is ambitious. I once had a college class where the students were very upset because I decided to change the number of in-class quizzes from 5 to 4 a few weeks into the course. (The quizzes made up 10% of the overall grade.) Students hate it when you do anything even remotely weird or unexpected with assessments. Telling them that there is going to be a mystery trick assessment will just make them anxious and grumpy.
Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
My physics professor told us once about a lab he had to do when he was a student himself, about measuring the adiabatic gas constant of air. The workload at that point was immense, so lots of students would just write a report and give the textbook answer—and be marked wrong. It turned out the TA had sabotaged the experiment by putting alcohol in the bottom of the (dark glass) measurement bottle, so the measurement w…
The trouble with these kinds of games is that they put the more diligent students at a disadvantage. For example, someone might compare their experimental result against the textbook constant, realise it's wrong, and spend much more time trying to identify their "mistake", not realising they've been sabotaged. This puts further pressure on their other work. One cannot argue that this is fair on the basis that it's th…
Given that the labs were with TAs present, at that point, you'd just go to the TA and they'd tell you to write down the number even if it didn't match.
Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is enraging. I've seen similar things happen too and it blows my mind how ridiculous some of these teachers can be. I don't know if it's dehumanization of their students in their minds or an utter unwillingness to devote 30 seconds of directed attention to understanding the situation and making a reasonable judgment, but whatever the cause it is prolific. The only thing worse is when one of them will add somethi…
It's a general problem with large bureaucracies. If you're a cog in the machine, the safest way is to always stick to the rules, and avoid any situation where one has to exercise discretion, since any personal judgment comes with potential personal responsibility down the line.
It bugs me that oftentimes there appear to be nothing but cogs (e.g. Intel)
Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)
#277Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I chose to take a horrible but passing grade in the lab, finished the class with a C- (which was unusual for me), and went on to pretend that the whole thing never happened. This sentence could have also ended "my gpa dipped below the threshold for some bullshit mark it up to mark it down exercise masquerading as a scholarship and I had to re-take the class for a better grade anyway"
Indeed it could have. I was on a fairly prestigious scholarship; luckily, my marks were good enough that this was a low-risk decision. That said... I graduated with a 3.2 GPA, after being the stereotypical "gifted" student up through high school. A 3.2 is, apparently, still decent. However, I did feel a bit of a twinge seeing my peers walk at graduation with with cords, bents, and other regalia, where I just had my s…
I probably learned more in my first year of working than I did in my degree. Not just technical skills and gaps that had been glossed over during study, but also about myself as an individual. You made the right choice, and it's one I wish I had the foresight and maturity to have made at that point in my life.
Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would love to hear some of your examples, if only to reinforce your lesson to myself.
“Is the box plugged in? Did you cycle the power?” I’ll trust that you understand each of those words individually but later verify that the box is actually plugged in.
That's why tech support has moved on to "unplug the thing, wait a minute, then plug it back in".
It gives the capacitors to discharge; but more importantly, it gives an excuse to actually force the person to plug the thing in.
Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)
#280One of my Core Memories when it comes to science, science education, and education in general was in my high school physics class, where we had to do an experiment to determine the gravitational acceleration of Earth. This was done via the following mechanism: Roll a ball off of a standard classroom table. Use a 1990s wristwatch's stopwatch mechanism to start the clock when the ball rolls of the table. Stop the stopw…
That’s pretty bad. On top of being unfair, it was a total missed opportunity to talk about the law of large numbers (I wonder if they could get a decent sample by combining everybody’s measurements) or skew (maybe everybody is a couple milliseconds too low just based on reaction time). Or there could be some air resistance if you used, like, ping-pong balls.
Correct. Ask anyone who plays blitz/bullet chess online. Games are won and lost in the final second of gameplay.