The “Odd” Semester

1.The disclaimer of the post on the second semester(cf. The Semerillion) carries over here too. In a nutshell, the material below doesn’t necessarily reflect the author’s ideas and feelings.

2. Each word of the title of this post is equally important.

A short description of courses:

MA205. Probability and Random Processes.

One of the smooth courses one can attend in IIT where the teacher, the student and the classroom are peaceful. We were taught by a guest faculty and believe me, he packed quite a punch! It was really interesting to learn about Markov Processes and Brownian motion at the end but I think the syllabus ought to cover more of such interesting things rather than topics like Spurious Contagion.

EC101. Electric and Magnetic Circuits.

This was a reminder to EP students and the Electrical Engineering department that mutual co-existence isn’t as easy as it sounds. There was a lot of Bremsstrahlung(cf. previous blog-post. MWell’s analysis really paid off!) even here except that here it was covered with all sorts of mathematical “complexities” like computing a fourth order determinant. “We went, we slept, we came back, we wept”.

EP210. Introduction to Engineering Optics.

This was one of the better courses we had this semester. Here, the number of benches in the class exceeded the number of students and the teacher put together by a huge margin. It was not because the classes were boring as I was led to believe initially, but because the “invisibles” wanted to test the principles learnt in class.

EP201. Elements of Classical Dynamics.

I believe Theoretical Physics is one of the coolest and most interesting subjects on the planet(Yes. I am a geek.) and my belief was more than substantiated by this course. It was taught by one of the coolest profs I’ve ever met and was taught in one of the coolest ways. This was one of the courses which leaves you asking for more and indeed, I wanted more. We were supposed to do Special Relativity(how much more cool can it get?)(Yes again! I am a geek.) and sadly, because of some time constraints, we were not able to. But, on the whole, I believe the Physics Department has more courses like this to offer to keep up our interest in Theoretical Physics.

HS592. Indian Art.

Thrice a week, we were taken to the time of the Cholas, The Hoysalas and the Pandyas. That was what this course was: A time machine. It was a very enjoyable course where we learnt some non-trivial stuff about of architecture and sculpture and also a lot of facts on Paintings and stuff. Before I get stoned for being so inept at describing things that are worth describing, I end the section on this course by saying that it is really one of the innovative courses that the HS department has to offer.

ID120. Introduction to Ecology and Environment.

True Random Number Generation(as opposed to pseudo random numbers) and a lot of mugga-mugga-wugga, mugga-mugga-wugga were what we learnt in this course. Nothing better would have made the students go to sleep on a nice Wednesday afternoon, not even a lullaby, was the sincere opinion of a suprisingly large number of students.

BT101. The Life Sciences.

The subject was very interesting though the classes were boring. (I think the large classrooms play a huge part in this). But, in the end, I believe the instructor made up for the lack of interest by delivering a set of very nice lectures on Neurology and the brain. On the whole, I enjoyed this course.

EC211. Digital Circuits Laboratory.

Here, we learnt that if there are around 1000 wires on a breadboard, there is a probability of 0.99 that one of the wires is loose and is not connected. Further more, it is deterministically true that if there are more than 6 ICs on the breadboard, one of them is burnt. But come on, it was not a complete waste of time as we learnt the virtue of patience, that quintessential trait which helps a species to survive in an ever-competitive
environment.(brr.. too much of Biology and Philosophy, two subjects the union of
which no one would like to see )

On the whole, the semester was enjoyable though the weather was not. It was too cold, especially during the last month of the semester when I was surprised it didn’t rain cats and dogs. We were caught in a cyclone and it certainly dampened my spirits a little bit.

The bottom line is that there is much room for improvement mainly on the students’ side and a little bit on the tutors’ side. I would like to end this post with a small quote by an anonymous EP student(who was in dire straits at that moment) to an Elec student: “Nullified, Petrified, Horrified, by you.”