In my upper year courses, I ask for point form responses. Three points max. It stops them from rambling.

In my 2nd-year course, I switched all the concept questions to multiple choice. At first, I thought this would be way too easy for them. It wasn’t.

At lunch, we were chuckling over the many scientific papers in which the experimental setup figure, made in 3D rendering software, had a laser that cast a shadow. Light doesn’t cast a shadow of course!

… so we made it cast one!
Work done at uOttawa along with the Boyd group

Love these.

On the other hand, I’ve put more than a few things in that don’t work. Crystal glass = small explosion. Tea cups with metallic decorations = sparks and smoke.

A little past peak colour but, after our planned hikes kept getting cancelled due to rain, my group finally decided to just go on a walk at Beechwood cemetery in Ottawa where the trails wouldn’t be muddy. None but me had been. They were surprised at its size and the interesting graves and monuments.

I’m going try this for fun too!

Thanks!

We had a great talk from Sean Molesky of Polytechnique Montreal showing there is a systematic way to find performance bounds for inverse design. ie how to know you are doing well with your design (and when you’re done rewriting your code to go faster!).