I faltered these past four days in updating this blog. Part of it was because of the test on Friday and the other part was me being lazy on the weekend but I’m filling in the gaps now so it’s okay! From July 4 – July 7, I may be doing a different format, mainly because I forgot what I ate for some meals and what the weather was like. So the next three to four posts will mainly be about all the fun I’ve had!
The Good, The Food, The Amazing
I don’t remember much about Thursday besides the QMU serving us American food. For lunch, we were beef briskets with boiled potatoes and gravy. The beef was a bit sinewy and a bit touch to chew. The dinner on the other hand was pretty bomb. For our entrees, we could choose between a burger, a hot dog, or mac and cheese, all of which came with fries. Then they served apple pie with whipped cream for desert and also some candy (something akin to jelly beans and gummy bears) and our choice of an American soda like fanta. I got the mac and cheese, fries, apple pie, and cherry 7UP. I was a bit amazed they carried flavors like that. 7UP used to be one of my favorite sodas so it was nice getting a bit of nostalgia.
The pie and candies were served on two tables connected together. The table with apple pie had the American flag draped over it and the other table had the Scottish flag covering it. It was a nice symbolic and friendly show of affection and the QMU staff really put their best into making us feel at home, which I greatly appreciate.
Ball Bearings and Collisions (Lots of complaining ahead)
We had lab today and honestly thought it was pretty sucky. A lot of my friends agree with me on this too. The lab was pretty simple; we just had to record a video of two ball bearings colliding with one another and then using a video analyzer to see if the kinetic energy and momentum of the system was conserved.
So gathering the data wasn’t that bad and one of my partners had a phone that had a high quality camera. Our video looked like a 720p resolution physics demonstration YouTube video. It was pretty cool. But then came the bad part. We had to superimpose different data sets on the same graph and I had no idea how to do that on Excel. Luckily the TAs were able to help me but my other two lab partners weren’t so fortunate. They had Macs, which meant they had to use Google Sheets. The TAs weren’t familiar with Google Sheets so they pretty much had no guidance. As a team, we spent 30 minutes just trying to make the graphs. I think it’s foolish that a lot of our difficulties in these labs come not from the actual physics, but from not being familiar with software. We were never warned about needing to know how to use Excel or Google Sheets, and learning it under pressure, for a grade, is something the program should review. I am totally for using Excel to analyze data but we should be given a list of things to become familiar with so we aren’t scrambling to google it DURING our three hour lab, which should be devoted to actually analyzing the data and doing physics.
Anyway, I finished the lab but the work was sloppy. Across our section, there was not much time for us to be as meticulous as we were on our last lab, which is truly unfortunate. One of our biggest gripes too was that we started 20 minutes late, part of which was because the TAs weren’t done setting up the lab yet. Well there was really nothing to set up so I don’t even know what they were doing. But when I asked if we would get a 10 or 20 minute extension, I was told that the deadline was still a hard 1:00pm. Man it was bad, and possibly slightly unfair if the other groups got more time. To make matters worse, this was the first day that they were starting a late penalty, which added even more pressure. At least half the section turned in their lab reports within 2 minutes of the deadline, with some even turning it in after. None of us learned anything, so was there a point in being this archaic?
The Grind…again
I think I took a nap after I got back and then worked on multiple choice questions with Robert, Anabella, Richard, and Raya for 3-4 hours. But some of that time was spent socializing but we finished all the multiple choice questions! I was really tripped up on a yo-yo multiple choice and it really felt like we didn’t have much support this week. Both cycles for the week were difficult for us to understand and we weren’t lectured on the gritty details of the concepts, which made some of the trickier questions almost impossible for us to correctly logic out without using google or Chegg for the answers. Lots of resigned to take the “L” for this test.
