Well if your anecdote implies that the other 19 actually knew what
'geosynchronous' means (or, heaven forbid, could figure it out), then it is
not so bad. If, OTOH, your 5 were joined by another 10 who couldn't figure
the word out, then I would guess that's about right. ;-(
Rick (who recently had 5 in his Calc-level class tell me that the angles in
a 3-4-5 triangle were all 45 degree, and about the same number do an
integral of xdx/(a^2+x^2)^1.5 by pulling all the x's except dx outside the
integral so they could get a simple answer of 'x'!
----- Original Message -----
From: "Monce, Michael N." <mnmon@conncoll.edu>
A bit of a vent: I'm teaching astronomy for the first time in about 15
years ans suddenly have become aware of a serious depletion of general
knowledge that certainly wasn't there when I last taught the course.
I recently gave an exam that had a problem on geosynchronous satellite.
To solve the problem the student should obviously know the rotation rate of
the earth. Well, I now know that 5 students out of a class of 24 had no
idea that 1) the earth rotates, and 2) that the rotation rate is 24 hours.
i.e. they had no idea what causes day and night. Is it really that bad out
there???