All of the classes have finished our reviews from the last semester, and are heading out into new material. Be thinking about what sort of classes you all might be interested in over the summer. Last summer we did all entry-level projects, but this summer we will have students that have the skills to do more advanced work if you all are interested.
Computer Programming
This week we focused on HTML generation from an array. We looked at how to (a) look at a web page and find structural repetitions, (b) convert those into data items, and (c) write JavaScript functions that convert the data into HTML. Not only is this a good programming exercise, this sort of technique is at the core of how the web is built. It may not seem useful with small datasets, but as the datasets grow larger, the ability to separate out what the data is and how it works together in a page is crucial to working with data of all kinds. Eventually, you learn how to convert those arrays of data into databases, and then you will be able to have other people add items to your database, and have it generate pages for you. At the core of all of this is what we did in class today.
Also remember that we looked at several methods for attaching functions to objects. The one we focused on today used the “this” implicit parameter. We also talked about how you can store JavaScript objects into HTML elements. This is a great technique, though store data objects into HTML elements is a bit clunky. The other method we looked at involved calling a function and creating variables that our callback function will have access to. We will go more in-depth on that next week. In any case, you will need to do one of these two methods for your final class project.
For this week, we are again looking at chapter 15. Do the final exercise in that chapter for class next week. Also, just to remind you, we used the “onmouseover” and “onmouseout” events to do the colors, and used the “style.color.backgroundColor” field of our element to change out the background colors.
Electronics
This week we started capacitors. A new version of the book is ready to download, and capacitors are in Chapter 17. I’m not sure if this is anywhere in the book, but remember that:
- milli means 1/1,000
- micro means 1/1,000,000
- nano means 1/1,000,000,000
- pico means 1/1,000,000,000,000
- just for fun, femto means 1/1,000,000,000,000,000, but you would never use it unless you were developing integrated circuits
Next week we will build timers and oscillators with capacitors.
Calculus
This week we covered infinite series and solving unsolvable integrals with them. The type of series we used today were called Maclaurin series. Next week, we will look at a more general type of series representation.
For homework, I will load the “Integration by Parts” chapter with homework problems this weekend.
The most important thing to remember is that if someone says something is impossible, there are usually implicit boundaries that are making it impossible, and perhaps the impossible becomes possible when those boundaries are removed.
Have a great week everyone!