Re: formulas and calculators

[Lowell Herr <herr@catseq.catlin.edu>]

Steve,

Your reply is a bit confusing.  Do you permit calculators or not?  If  
you do, how will you handle the TI-92 when students come in with the 
power to solve problems symbolically.  Frankly, if a student can program 
the calculator and/or solve problems symbolically on a calculator, I really 
don't care as the problems need to be such that students really need to 
know the physics.  As yet I have not had a problem with students moving 
information from calculator to calculator with infrared sharing capabilities.

Lowell Herr
>    Martha Takats' comment about filling calculators with formulas is
> interesting to me.  I have students asking if it's alright to use their
> programmable calculators on exams, and they have a strange look on their
> faces when they ask.  Apparently they believe that the calculators can be
> programmed to do the problems for them.  I respond that I really don't
> care what kind of calculators they use, because they have to show all of
> their work anyway in order to get credit for an answer.  And besides, some
> of the problems they are given require symbolic answers, not numerical
> answers.  I emphasize to them that _they_ are responsible for learning
> how to do the problems.  They can't have a calculator, no matter how
> powerful it is, do the work for them.
>
> Steve Luzader
> Frostburg State University
> sluzader@fre.fsu.umd.edu