So, the first of 5 problems on a POLICY homework assignment, assumes that the student is capable of determining the density of air at arbitrary temperatures. I say “assumes” because the information is nowhere to be found in the chapter in question or in the index.
I did not come to grad school for policy to be tested on my ability to google air density tables.
weird…is this the whole PV=nRT formula from chemistry? =)
Yeah, the ideal gas law works here.
n/V = P/RT
If one were truly ambitious, you could look up the partial pressures and molecular weights of the constituent gases of the atmosphere, (N2, O2, and CO2 I think are the three biggest) and calculate it out by hand without reference to a lookup table. Or you can just use the lookup table like any reasonable person does.
ah…I’m having flashbacks to 3 hour chemistry classes at the local college late at night.
*runs screaming*
it is my understanding that people doing policy work are constantly having to do research about things they are not terribly familiar with. if this kind of basic research is irritating you might be in the wrong line of work … ?
yikes … that reads as really harsh. i promise that’s not how i meant it.
Enh, no worries.
I’m more frustrated because this professor has, in less than a year, developed a very well deserved reputation for overworking her students. She points out that her favorite classes were the ones that “made her bleed a little.” When I reiterated a point that a student had brought up in class, privately, in her office, about how she provides way more work for 3 units than other instructors do, she was dismissive of my concerns. She also brought up CMU (where she got her PhD) and said that the undergrads there “sweated blood”. I agreed with her assessment and pointed out that I had a couple of what could be called “nervous breakdowns” there.
As much as my concern that she provides too much work to us, she provides too little feedback. More work is more educational up to a point. But if there’s so much work that the best she can do for grading a 2 or 3 page essay is “3/5, Good” with some stray underlining, a representative sample of the feedback she’s given, then it’s not very educational.
So, back to my point. Yeah, air density matters for windmill power, which relates to how well they do their job, and whether windmills are better than PV or whatever. But if this is important enough to test us on, it should be important enough to include in lecture, in the readings, or in a note on the assignment itself. It doesn’t bother me overly much, because I have the science background to handle it, and if I fucked around with converting temperature to Kelvin, etc, I could have found it, probably more quickly than the lookup table I used. I was second guessing my interpretation of the ideal gas law, but it turns out to be sensible.
However, most of my classmates do not have my science background. My impression is that most of them turned to the TA who said “you can find the answer on wikipedia, under air density.” I’m annoyed because I don’t see the pedagogical purpose this serves, and it’s pretty clear from the “60%=F=’Good'” feedback I got earlier that she’s not all there on the pedagogical angle herself.
This is, for the record, WAA. And she’s still world’s awesomest advisor, but she has a loooong way to go on the teaching.