Falling behind...

It's been busy busy at Woodberry. Last week we held the US Invitational Young Physicist Tournament on campus (about which more later). Raffles Institution, from Singapore, defeated Woodberry Forest in the final.

As far as the Woodberry team was concerned, the best part of the tournament was the final evening's party at the Holiday Inn Express. Although all the teams socialized, the Woodberry guys* seemed to slather their attention heavily on the team from Brisbane Girls Grammar School. (They're GIRLS! And they have Australian accents!)

We all had great fun for the weekend. The cost of that fun, from my perspective, was a week of falling behind in my classes as I took care of details as tournament director. I have next to me this morning a stack of papers 7.5 cm high... and that's AFTER I spent two nights this week grading papers on dorm duty.
What do you do when you're so hopelessly behind that you will certainly not catch up before next week's end of the term?

Start by recognizing that you're NOT going to catch up with every assignment. In a marathon grading session, it's not worth starting at the beginning of the stack and intending to get to the end. Accept that your work will be incomplete. I picked out a few homework problems at random to grade. It's late enough in the school year that grading papers is unlikely to uncover anything new about a particular student. The diligent ones will still be diligent, the lazy ones still lazy, and the smart ones still smart. The whole purpose in grading now lies in checking up, sending the message that "I'm still watching you!" Just a few spot checks can do wonders for making sure the class keeps up with their work.

The other aspect to catching up with grading is to add as little as possible to the stack. My class starts each day with a short quiz. On Friday, I wrote a 5-question multiple choice quiz about one of the problems from the night before. Don't expect that I'll be grading that problem, now -- this quiz has evaluated their homework, and saved me considerable time.

* Woodberry is an all-boys boarding school, so in this case "guys" is not a gender-neutral term.

Here's one of the three homework problems that were assigned for Friday, which I think I got from the 1997-vintage Zitziewitz-Merrill text, but I'm not sure:

A fisherman’s scale stretches 3.9 cm when a 2.7 kg fish hangs from it.
(a) What is the spring constant of the scale?
(b) What will be the amplitude and frequency of vibration if the fish is pulled down 2.5 cm more and released so that it vibrates up and down?

And, below, take a look at the multiple choice quiz. Notice I've changed values so calculators are not necessary. (Why do the questions start at #15? Because multiple choice quizzes for the whole term go on the same scantron. That means I only have to grade multiple choice quizzes every 50 questions or so!)


A fisherman’s scale stretches 4.0 cm when a 2.0 kg fish hangs from it. The spring is pulled down 2.5 cm more and released so that it vibrates up and down.

15. What is the spring constant of the scale?
(A) 0.05 N/m
(B) 0.5 N/m
(C) 5 N/m
(D) 50 N/m
(E) 500 N/m

16. What is the amplitude of the harmonic motion?
(A) 4.0 cm
(B) 5.0 cm
(C) 6.5 cm
(D) 2.0 cm
(E) 2.5 cm

17. The period of the harmonic motion is 0.40 s. What is the frequency of the harmonic motion?
(A) 0.40 Hz
(B) 2.5 Hz
(C) 4.0 Hz
(D) 0.25 Hz
(E) 5.0 Hz

18. In a new experiment, the spring is pulled down 5.0 cm instead of 2.5 cm to begin the harmonic motion. How does the new period compare with the period in problem 3?
(A) It doubles.
(B) It remains the same.
(C) It is cut in half.
(D) It is multiplied by √2.
(E) It is divided by √2.

19. In a new experiment, a 4 kg fish is attached to the same spring and pulled down 2.5 cm to begin harmonic motion. How does the new period compare with the period in problem 3?
(A) It doubles.
(B) It remains the same.
(C) It is cut in half.
(D) It is multiplied by √2.
(E) It is divided by √2 .