Date: Mon Oct 14 06:15:41 PDT 2002
Student's Name: Stephen
Answer(or question to Mentor): The answer is 6.4 miles. I got the answer by dividing thirty-two by five. I did that because five seconds equal one mile and thirty-two seconds passed. I divided because I was trying to find out how many miles it traveled.
Date: Mon Oct 14 06:25:43 PDT 2002
Student's Name: Stephen
Answer(or question to Mentor): The answer to the first challenge question is 33,792 feet. I got this answer by multiplying 6.4 by 5,280. I did this because it wanted the answer in feet. I had the answer in miles and I just had to convert it to feet.
Date: Fri Oct 18 00:20:06 PDT 2002
Student's Name: Stephen
Mentor Reply: Hi Stephen!
Your answer is correct and I'm really impressed with that. Stephen, just a little correction that I want to make to you is that five seconds ain't equal one mile, but it is in 5 seconds the thunder travels one mile. Just be more careful with your wording, there.
Next, for your first challenge problem, I don't quite understand why you multiplied 6.4 by 5,280. The problem asks for how far the sound of thunder travels in feet per second. My suggestion to you is that to read the problem again and really understand what it asks for. I look forward to see your revision, Stephen.
Bye bye Stephen (go and challenge yourself with your second challenge problem, Stephen. I would love to read your solutions.)
Cam
Date: Fri Oct 18 06:11:40 PDT 2002
Student's Name: Stephen
Answer(or question to Mentor): Your submission to me is not showing up. Could you try to send your submission again?
Date: Sun Oct 20 05:03:01 PDT 2002
Student's Name: Stephen
Instructor Comments: Cam,
Stephen's explanation is terrific, but I think it is the best he can do. So, maybe we won't push him to explain further and, as I said before, asking him to be more careful about the wording of 5 seconds equals 1 mile is probably being too picky. I would simply say that his answer is correct and his explanation does include a good rationale for why he divided. NOTE: it is not considered proper English to EVER use "ain't".
Instead of saying that you don't understand why he multiplied 6.4 x 5,280, I would first say, directly, that his answer for the first challenge problem is incorrect. You can say that he is on the right track by refering back to the information in the previous problem, but, as you said, the question asks for feet per second. His answer would reflect only a number of feet that the thunder sounded for that specific problem. When you ask him to read the problem over again, you are not really helping him to see what he is missing. THink about if you were the student: wouldn't you want someone to explain more directly what is wrong? I would explain that the question is more general: it is asking him to figure out a general rate for the speed of the thunder sound.
Finally, a style note: it does not read really well to keep inserting his name at the end of each sentence. Please take those out.
Dr. Bowers
Date: Sun Oct 20 05:06:23 PDT 2002
Student's Name: Stephen
Instructor Comments: REVISION ON MY LAST NOTE: I made a mistake: I meant to say that Stephen's explanation is NOT terrific, but it is acceptable. So, simply say that his answer for the original problem is correct, and focus on his challenge answers. Also, I mispelled "refering" it should be: referring.
Dr. Bowers
Date: Tue Oct 22 00:30:07 PDT 2002
Student's Name: Stephen
Mentor Reply: Hi Stephen!
Good job! Your answer to the original problem is correct.
For your first challenge problem, your answer is incorrect. The problem asked for how far sound travels in FEET PER SECOND. Based on the original problem, the sound of thunder travels 1 mile per 5 seconds. How can you convert this 1 mile per 5 seconds to feet per second? This is what the first challenge problem asked for. Your answer referred to the number of feet in 6.4 miles. So what you did is not what the problem asked for. Therefore, your answer is wrong. Now you need to revise your answer by doing what the problem asked for. And you should go ahead and challenge yourself with the second challenge problem. I look forward to read your revision and your second challenge problem's solutions.
Bye, Stephen
Cam
Date: Tue Oct 22 16:40:17 PDT 2002
Student's Name: Stephen
Mentor Reply: Stephen,
Good job! Your answer to the original problem is correct.
I was glad to see that you also worked on the challenge problems. Your first answer is incorrect. The problem asked for how far sound travels in feet per second given that the sound of thunder travels 1 mile in 5 seconds. So, the question is asking you to convert this 1 mile per 5 seconds to feet per second.
I want to encourage you to go ahead and try the second challenge problem. I look forward to reading your solutions.
Bye,
Cam
Date: Wed Oct 23 17:42:04 PDT 2002
Student's Name: Stephen
Answer(or question to Mentor): My new answer to the first challenge problem is 6,758.4 feet per second. I got this new answer by dividing 33,792 into five. I divided by five because it was asking for how many times in one second and my other answer was in five seconds.
Your second submission is not showing up.
Date: Wed Oct 23 17:54:47 PDT 2002
Student's Name: Stephen
Answer(or question to Mentor): The answers to the second challenge problem is:
a.6,000 times per minute
b.360,000 times per hour
c.8,640,000 times per day
d.60,480,000 times per week
e.241,920,000 times per four week month
f.2,903,040,000 times per year
I got these answers by multiplying the previous number by the number of units time needed to make the new and bigger unit. I did this because I needed to find out how many lightning strikes there were in each unit of time. Each unit of time was bigger than the previous.
