The Odd Number

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There. That's the correct term. Not professor. Haha.

I had my first official class at lasal last Friday. Apart from some slight mistakes and my horrible, large handwriting on the blackboard, I think I did okay. But that's just me. I asked one of the students if I did good. He said he found it difficult to understand the lesson. However, he added that maybe it was because he arrived late for my class. And he also said that when I was explaining things when I while I was giving them a seatwork, he understood the topic better.

I don't know. Maybe the subject is really that difficult or maybe I simply sucked. But I'll get better. I have to. A lot of people depend on that.

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Whatever that word means. Haha.

Being part of the faculty, I was invited to join the Freshmen Convocation, an event where the professors of the ECE Department get to meet the first years (may the lord god forgive them for choosing to major in ECE). Anyway, as the emcees were calling upon "our" names, I was waiting for mine. I then realized that the faculty was being called alphabetically and that they missed my surname. As the last of the full-timers (and old-timers) was called, I was still seated, along with another part-timer. Then, she got called because one of the profs tipped the emcees. I was left alone. Haha.

The professor who rescued my fellow assistant lecturer from the shame was gesturing me to stand. I did. But I pointed to the door. Haha. He then got one emcee's mike and handed it to me. He said, "Introduce yourself." So I did.

I was thinking of saying something like: "Of course, we always save the best for last..." but I changed my mind. Instead I simply said my name, as calmly as I can. Haha.

I suppose I will be the most remembered "prof" that afternoon because of that.

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No pun intended.

When I agreed to handle the two DIGCOLA (I forgot the new name. LBYECE-something.) sections, I figured it wouldn't be too much of a problem. It wouldn't really, had it been the same DIGCOLA course I took two(?) years ago.

Apparently, during my time, there were two professors who took on DIGCOLA, Mr. Sybingco and Mr. Manzano, and each used their own manual. Hence, there are two sets of experiments that are totally different from one another. I took mine with the latter as my prof and now, I am using the former's version of the manual. To my shock and dismay, I can't recognize any of the experiments. Big trouble. At this point, my students and I are pretty much on the same level. My only advantage is that I'm with the faculty.

So, since I can't pass this burden to anyone (No one would take it anyway. Maybe the reason why I got it is because Mr. Sybingco doesn't want to take it in the first place and so did the full-timers, as well as the other part-timers. Maybe because I am the last one to apply, I got the "latak" courses, the rejects. Heck, even the other subject I have is a lot of hell to go through. I know. I survived through it. I also took INDELIN.), I have no other choice but to get on with this until the end of the term. So, I decided to perform the experiments alone. So far, I've finished two.

Experiment 1: I managed to find out that Mr. Leonor got to handle this subject two terms back. I went straight to him. According to him, he did take on DIGCOLA once. Never again, he says. Great. He gave me some precious handouts though.

So, last Thursday morning, I went to deal with the impossible, to perform the experiments on my own. I managed to get the code working. However, my output was incorrect. I reckoned I'd take care of it later on a spare PC during lab period.

But luck was just not on my side. There were five available set of equipment according to the technician. Enough for the five groups of the Thursday class. To make matters worse, there were only six PCs in the lab and one was busted. I decided to let them do the experiments first and step in when there are any troubles. Soon enough, they arrived.

First, one group can't proceed with the experiment because their PC lacked the needed drivers to interface the function generator and the digital oscilloscope with the PC. I told them to share a PC with another group. And second, all of the groups can't understand the second activity. I can't blame them. I don't expect anyone to get the experiment anyway.

Basically, the first experiment's objective is to remotely control the function generator and the digital oscilloscope using the PC. Then, the display on the oscilloscope should be sampled and stored in Matlab as a matrix. Afterwards, the matrix should be plotted to trace the same display from the oscilloscope onto a Matlab graph. This is accomplished by adjusting their settings using Matlab codes. Sounds easy. Exactly. It just seems that way. One setback is that the students are expected to have prior knowledge of the user manual of both the oscilloscope and source. The user manual contains the correct syntax of the codes that are used to configure the oscilloscope and generator. Another problem is the number of connections for the experiment, which makes it quite challenging to troubleshoot where an error is coming from should the students encounter one. A detailed example might help you understand this one.

I performed the experiment earlier before the class started. I had some trouble with the output. I let it go for the meantime. When the class was getting uneasy because of the difficulty of the experiment, I went to the PC that was directly in front of the professor's desk. I ran my program. It didn't work. That's impossible, really. If it ran in another PC, it should run anywhere else. That is, unless the Matlab program in the other PCs are not functioning as they should be. So, I went to the PC that I used during the morning. I figured it should work there. I then warned the class that there will be an output but it wouldn't be correct. Lo and behold, the PC showed us the right output. It was then that I considered Sir Leonor's advice: "Skip Experiment 1".

I went to the front and explained to the class exactly that. I told them what happened to me earlier. What I initially thought to be a software-related problem turned out to be with the hardware, specifically, with the probe that was connected to the function gen. I enumerated to them the all the possible causes of errors and told them that this would be a good experiment if the instruments we have are uniform. But they aren't. So, much to their relief (and mine as well), I canceled Experiment 1. Before I dismissed the class, I demonstrated the process of adjusting the function generator's settings and I showed all who are interested the output.

Experiment 2: This turned out to be a whole lot easier. Purely software. Even if the experiment numbered 30 pages in all, all the students have to do is to just drag the icons onto a workspace and make the necessary connections and a few minor adjustments to correctly display the outputs. Above all these, the steps are all listed down on the manual. I have yet to let any of the two classes perform this one though but it took me a little less than two hours to finish everything. That is, without sleep the night before and falling asleep in front of the PC from time to time.

I can't wait for the term to be through. Hahaha. 

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Instructions: Each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their seven things, as well as these rules. At the end of your blog, you need to choose 7 people to get tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them that they have been tagged and to read your blog!

1.) I still enjoy smoking.

2.) I fall in love too easily. Too easily to the point that I hate it.

3.) On the contrary, I find it difficult to recover from it.

4.) I have stopped writing. Maybe I gave it up.

5.) I teach.

6.) I'm tired.

7.) Very tired.

Tagging: Baboysai, Karen, Crapo, Aids, Dandi, Thea, whoever.

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A student of mine at the tutorial center told me that I sound funny when I speak in Filipino. Odd. I speak better Tagalog than English.

Another keeps on asking me if I'm Filipino. Every day. Seriously.

Have I really changed that much?

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And I'm not certain if the cause is hangover or my jobs.

It could be both. Haha.

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A Dell Inspiron 5100 to be exact.

Whee.

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My 19 students in INDELIN had their first exam yesterday. When I saw the hapless look on their faces, I knew that I won't be doing much checking on their papers. Pun intended.

So far, I had graded 9 papers. I started with the one that belongs to the lone student who fell asleep in the middle of the exam. I did that because I figured that he would get the lowest score in the class. Surprisingly though, he got 32 out of 100, better than some of his classmates who were awake the entire 1.5 hours of the exam. For the current record, the lowest got 21 while the highest is 62, three points short of passing. Tsk tsk.

Anyway, before I finalized the contents of the exam, I asked some of my ECE friends and fellow professors to take a look at it. Some say that the exam is too long. Others told me that it's difficult. I, on the other hand, think that it's just right. After all, the six items of the exam are basically similar to the examples we discussed in class. Some are even too alike that I supposed they wouldn't present any challenge at all. Below is the description of how the exam was like.

1. An SCR that has a DIAC attached to its gate terminal. The input is AC. There are two capacitors to provide the delay to increase the value of the firing delay angle. A load is connected at the anode terminal of the SCR.  I asked them to compute for the load power and to draw the waveforms. They should know this because we've been solving problems similar to this one in class. (This is worth 25 points.)

2. A sine wave is given. It has a positive half-cycle firing delay angle and a negative half-cycle firing delay angle that are not separated by 180 degrees. As such, one has to apply a different formula to solve for the required AC and DC power at a given load resistance. I told them that quite a number of times in our previous meetings. (This is worth 10 points.)

3. A DC supply is connected to two resistors in series. Then, a Shockley diode is connected in parallel to the second resistor. I asked them to solve for the voltages across the diode and the first resistor and to find the current passing through the diode at certain input voltages. I also asked them to plot the input voltage and the ones across the first resistor and the diode. Now, this circuit is not new to them. I even felt generous enough to show them how EXACTLY one solves a problem like this (days before the exam, of course). What I did was to just change the values of the resistances and some other parameters but basically, the procedure for finding the required answers are similar to my examples. (This is worth 15 points.)

4. A bilateral breakover device is connected in series to two resistors and to an AC supply. I asked them to solve for the AC load power and to draw the waveforms. Since this circuit only has one loop, a simple voltage division formula and knowledge of how the breakover device functions would suffice to solve this item. (This is worth 10 points.)

5. I asked them to design a Zero Voltage Switching Circuit. I even gave them a hint that this would come out in the exam because I asked them to study the connections of the 555 Timer, AND Gate, Comparator, etc. for this circuit. I only required them to solve for a particular capacitance. This can be accomplished using the formulas I taught them before. Besides, all of the other pertinent variables are given to them. (This is worth 15 points.)

6. Now this. This item is actually very easy to solve. The steps are basically similar to the first item. I also required them to draw the waveforms at certain points in the circuit. Bridges are just added to control the SCR for both the positive and negative half-cycles of the source. The two transformers (no, not the movie) are just here for fun. Their respective peak voltages are given anyway. (Easy 25 points.)

Now, I would just like to say, "Hindi ako nagkulang sa pagturo sa kanila at lalong-lalo na sa pagbigay ng mga paalala."