Things are arriving! (2)

With many thanks to the nice lady at the San Francisco consulate, I received my permit for overseas travel, and applied for a new passport today.

Also met the students for the first time today over Skype. Despite their age (15-17) they seem very well prepared for 6.002x. They blasted through all the "basic" examples that I gave them. Ohm's law is a breeze. They know about P = IV. They've even seen a Wheatstone bridge. This will be great.

Also, learned that teaching a lecture over Skype is very strange for me. In particular, it is bewildering to be in two places in class at once (projected on the wall, and also on the laptop); it makes it hard to determine who is engaged. Obviously a (consistent) physical presence is very important. Thankfully, I won't have to teach over Skype for very long since I will soon be in Mongolia in person. I expect that English communication will be a non-negligible issue -- but it is difficult to assess such things well over Skype.

Another package dropped by today: lots of resistors, wires, capacitors, inductors (!), LEDs, basic digital (74xx) and linear ICs...