I am not angry about it, but I do have strong feelings on this topic. I have been subjected to this type of grading system many times in the past.
I find it ironic that you feel it is petty for others to take issue with pity points you might have given to poor students, but not petty for you to...
I find this attitude ridiculous and patronizing. You are basing your grade on how you 'feel' a student would react to that grade (without any real proof for your feeling) rather than on the quality of the student's work. I despise instructors who carry that type of attitude.
The equation you are using for distance only works for a constant speed.
Try other equations like:
d=d0 + v0t +1/2at^2
that are suited to constant acceleration.
I read quite a bit of judgmental attitude on your part in your explanations. You are exposing children who have been taught a certain way for ten years (forever, in their lives) to a new way of learning, and you are expecting immediate results. Your loaded terms imply that you think your...
Lecture is sometimes the only way to learn about a particular instructor's quirks. Off the top of my head, I remember a chemistry instructor who stated in a lecture that he considered all other physical sciences to be fields of chemistry. One of the questions on his test was 'Name 12 fields of...
I think you have the signs of the terms in the second integral reversed. The square root of x is larger than x squared on the interval from 0 to 1. If you evaluate your integral, you get a negative volume.
What is the total length of the path the ball takes on its way from point A to point B? Is it the same length for a chest level pass and a rebound pass? If the lengths are are different and the speed of the ball the same, then one will travel from point a to point b in less time than the other.
For trigonometric functions, the period is generally expressed as a constant coefficient of the independent variable. Look through your choices for a term that does not contain a constant coefficient of the independent variable. Graph it to confirm that it is not periodic.
I don't think any of the reasoning that you mentioned was ever intended to get you a law describing how things fall. Explaining why and describing how are not equivalent tasks.