Re: Meauring Volts?

[Herbert H Gottlieb <herbgottlieb@JUNO.COM>]

On Fri, 06 Dec 2002 09:49:05 -0500 "Edmiston, Mike"
<edmiston@BLUFFTON.EDU> writes:
> I just graded some lab reports from juniors and seniors in an a
> thermodynamics class.  They had used thermocouples to measure
> temperature, and many of them wrote things like, "We used a
> microvoltmeter to measure the volts."
>
> They should know better; we've discussed this type of thing before.

*** Let me start off by saying that you are perfectly correct when you
insist that your students use approved  terminology in their lab reports.
These days many of us either do not have the time to comb through the
"procedure" portion of the lab reports or we don't even bother having the
students reword the procedures
already printed in their lab instruction sheets.

I believe that the trouble starts in the elementary and high schools
where local funding problems result in oversize classes . With teaching
loads of more than 200 students each day, teachers do not even have the
time to spend more than five minutes grading a student's  composition.
After bad habits are established, they are very difficult to correct. If
college professors, like yourself have the desire and the time to correct
sentence structure, use of correct adverbs and adjectives, and other such
details of  students lab reports
in addition to the technical basics,  you are to be highly commended.

Herb Gottlieb from New York City
(Where we don't have the time to adequately correct several hundred
student lab reports each week)