I guess it’s a dog-day. No, not dogs as projectiles — what a horrible thought. (I used cats in my physics examples when I was teaching. Or smurfs, if I had blue chalk)
And a wiener dog, no less. Very Gary Larson.
Notice how the dog takes off as soon as the launcher draws back, making a distinctive sound. Pavlovian ballistics.
I’m no good at taking tests and the post “understanding” referenced within, over at the Blog of Doom.
I may not be able to see into their minds, but the problem I see is this: rather than learning the concepts and forming a mental model of how something works, students are learning (and are being taught) how to do certain problems. If a problem is outside the scope of what they’ve been taught, it’s considered impossible — even when it actually could be solved with their current knowledge. When a teacher tries to make students think outside the box, she’s accused of testing students on “stuff she never taught us.”
The flashback is to excuses I used to hear, of which “I’m no good at test-taking” was a favorite. We interviewed all students who failed exams, so there was a fair amount of opportunity to hear it.
Sunday’s Speed Bump cartoon.
The caption is (concerning an alien “dog”) “She’s 3 … or 22 trillion in light-years.”
Light-year, as we all know, is a distance. (As is “parsec.” I’m looking at you, Han Solo!)