(no subject)

[revchris]

I've spent all week working on homework for one of the Profs at work. We're forcing him to modernize - he has a software package that he had written for him in 1986 to let his students do all their homework on the computer (they each got a floppy with the student side of the program on it), and then every week he'd collect disks and the instructor side would do all the grading and gradebook stuff. XPSP2 killed it.

Now, I'm typing the entire semester's worth of homework into an online package called Desire2Learn. It's really fairly neat in what it can do (multiple choice, true/false, matching, ordering, arithmetic, etc. questions), but it does mean I get to type in 23 problem sets, with supplemental data, but no pictures (yet). I started Tuesday and have two sets left to go.

My typing speed is increasing, and I can keyboard fun things like:
a_o² = b_T-i·(g_(i)²·C_oe^Q/_RT)

and get them right on the first try.

It has to be entered as:

<font face="symbol">a</font>_o&sup2; = <font face="symbol">b</font>_T-<i>i</i><font face="symbol">·</font>(<font face="symbol">g</font>_{<b>(<i>i</i>)</b>&sup2;}<font face="symbol">·</font>C_oe<font size="-2">^{^{^Q/_RT}}</font>)

because I can't use CSS due to how the environment is set up.
[And yes, I'm enough of a geek to know how to make what looks like html code come up onscreen without being processed as code - and that code's even messier :) ]

I'm waiting to see what the prof says when he sees this table, since he thought it'd be way too much work to type in:

No.	Material		No.	Properties and/or Characteristics
00	Mylar film (polyester)		00	Excellent corrosion resistance, easily formed and welded, poor thermal conductivity
05	Borosilicate glass		05	Easily injection molded, very tough, good dimensional tolerances
10	Polystyrene		10	Low glass transition temperature, easy to shape, good chemical durability
15	Ductile cast iron		15	Excellent chemical durability, good thermal shock resistance, used for labware as well
20	PET (polyethylene terephthalate)		20	High strength produced by cold-drawing (orienting) fibers
25	1080 carbon steel cold drawn		25	Easily extruded and machined, tough, excellent water and chemical resistance, cheaper than Cu
30	Low density polyethylene		30	Easily formed by bending, folding, stamping, etc.; easily welded; low strength; low cost
35	14Na2O, 10CaO, 2Al2O3, 73SiO2 glass		35	Tough, good strength, good puncture resistance, low gas permeability
40	Aluminum Alloy 5182		40	Excellent optical clarity, high index of refraction
45	1008 carbon steel - annealed		45	Reasonable strength, good dimensional stability, tear resistant
50	22CaO, 15Al2O3, 8B2O3, 54SiO2 (E-glass)		50	Heat treatable to high tensile strength, hard, good corrosion resistance, can be investment cast
55	Austenitic stainless steel		55	Very high tensile strength (200ksi min.) stranded cable wires, often Zn coated
60	Martensitic stainless steel		60	Inexpensive, easy to injection mold, transparent, somewhat brittle
65	Polyamide (Nylon)		65	High-strength, high-modulus glass, good chemical resistance, used in composites
70	High density polyethylene (HDPE)		70	Higher strength, lower melting range than 3004
75	Polyvinyl chloride		75	Chemically inert, easily blow-molded, light yet tough, and reasonably strong
80	37PbO, 8K2O, 2Na2O, 53SiO2 glass		80	Easily formed by film-blowing, chemically inert, transparent, microwavable
85	Aluminum alloy T6061-T6		85	High strength-to-weight ratio, heat treatable to 45ksi tensile strength, good corrosion resistance
90	Acrylonitrile- Butadiene- Styrene (ABS)		90	Excellent drawability, corrosion resistant, low density, good thermal conductivity
95	Aluminum alloy 3004		95	Easy to cast, relatively high endurance limit can be achieved, low materials cost

(this table is the answer set for one question - choose the appropriate material from the first column and the property that you selected for from the second, enter the result as a four-digit number).

Comments

[misteropinion.livejournal.com]

I will never understand why people won't just use LaTeX for their formulaic markup. HTML is a gutter whore. Let's see...
${a_o}^2 = b_{\roman{T}-i}\dot (g_{(i)^2}\dot C_o e^{Q /RT})$
But that's just a first try with rusty remembering.

[revchris.livejournal.com]

And that doesn't help me, since the online tool only allows text or html.

One of these days I want to play with this:
http://people.hofstra.edu/faculty/Stefan_Waner/equation/codeindex.html

[therealattentiv.livejournal.com]

Great googly moogly. As if life weren't already short enough. I'm with misteropinion on this one. LaTeX is nice... I did my whole master's thesis using LaTeX and it was fabulously easy to do everything I needed (including equations that I could actually read and understand in the raw form). Isn't there some open source tool for editing equations and turning them into html? There *has* to be something better than the keyboard-barf you're having to create.