FBD, chant with me!

I use the odd rhyme and other mnemonics in my teaching, including online last year asking my class to turn on their microphones and all repeat after me:

“I solemnly swear, to draw the forces, all the forces, and nothing but the forces, on my free  body diagrams. So help me John”. (John is my co-lecturer – and it sounded better than “so help me Kate”). 

But after pondering the dVerse prompt to meet the bar with  a chant, I now have something bigger and… maybe…better… for this year’s cohort:

Now I know ’cause Kate told me

Now I know ‘cause Kate told me

I must master free body

I must master free body

Diagrams that show each force

Diagrams that show each force

If I want to pass this course

If I want to pass this course

integrity (extended version)

This is an extended version of Integrity, based even more closely on Macavity (Eliot, 1939).  

Integrity’s the missing value: I’m told it is assumed
that it’s a value we all share, or so it is presumed.
So it’s a bafflement when Turnitin raises flags in red,
and when we check for plagiarism – Integrity is dead!

0800 biochemistry lectures

This is for the dVerse Monday quadrille prompt “smudge”. A quadrille is 44 words exactly, and must include the prompt word.

I have tried,
I have tried so hard!
I have drunk coffee,
wiggled my toes
sat in the front row
holding my eyes open…
Only to find myself,
again
woken at the lecture’s end
with drool and
a smudge of ink on my cheek.

A lot of my poetry is at least semi-autobiographical. This is definitely autobiographical. Despite quite enjoying biochemistry at uni, I did sleep though almost every 8am lecture, no matter how hard I tried to stay awake. And I woke up more than once with my face stuck to my smudged notes. I don’t know what the poor lecturer thought of me sleeping in the front row with my eyes propped open.  

integrity

I started writing this because it’s almost marking season, and with the shift to online teaching and assessment there is a big focus on preventing and identifying plagiarism. It’s a sector wide issue, not particular to where I teach. And getting up early and seeing the dVerse prompt MTB: To turn again, about turn again. with the instruction to use epiphora (end of line repeats), and examples from Eliot, I thought it must be time to post it. So, with a nod to Macavity (Eliot, 1939):

Integrity, Integrity, there’s nothing like integrity,
it keeps you well within the law, and does it with sincerity,
but it’s power to inspire trust has gone and here instead
is a scene of academic crime – Integrity is dead!
Do not presume the authorship of anything you’ve read,
for Turnitin is telling you – Integrity is dead!

truss no one

I couldn’t help thinking of my students when I read today’s dVerse prompt, “Poetics: build a bridge”.  I tell them truss analysis is just like Sudoku but more fun – just lay out your equations, fill in the gaps, and truss me, that’s all there is to it! Until the build and test, that is. 

Every member – tension or compression?
Every joint – apply Newton’s second.
Have you considered load distribution?
What external forces make a contribution?

~put theory into practice~

Embody your equations in concrete and steel,
Now do the forces balance, for real?
Have you proved yourself a truss design master?
Or will your bridge feature on Engineering Disasters?

 

righting the writing

Thanks to the Mouse for the title to this one.  And to no specific student or colleague for the rest.  

I’m righting the writing,
un-verbing the nouns,
untangling the syntax
so meaning is found.

The love song of the empty red marking pen

I didn’t think I’d be writing anything this week, because I have all the end of semester marking to do and very limited time. But I couldn’t resist having a quick look to see what Eugi’s prompt was when I knocked off for the night – and then couldn’t resist when I saw it was “everlasting“. So here is my response; a homage to Eliot and a cry for help… well, marking support anyway…

Forces By Demons (FBDs)

A follow-up to Friction does not oppose motion, for Shruba and the Twisted Mouse:

Forces by demons,
and by engine elves,
and forces of motion
belong on same shelves.

Friction does not oppose motion!

You can’t, of course
walk or drive, with
no friction force.
Please tell your kith
and tell your kin:
You can’t begin
without friction.

cautionary example

or “mechanical disadvantage”:

Alas poor Spidey, poor Spidey is dead!
She’s hunted her last, and now she is spread
flat as a pancake, behind the door.
She made a mistake, and now she’s no more.