Improving Student Understanding of Vector Fields in Junior-Level E&M

Abstract

Over the past several years, the Physics Education Group at the University of Washington has been developing tutorial worksheets for small-group sections for junior-level electrodynamics courses. We have observed that most of our students enter these courses with a working knowledge of static electric and magnetic fields in simple systems. However, many students have significant difficulties in transferring this knowledge to other vector fields. We first attempted to address these difficulties by having students draw analogies from basic static fields to new vector fields, but this strategy proved to be challenging for many students. Our subsequent attempt focused on familiarizing students with how the divergence and curl of a vector field defines that vector field. This approach is proving successful in enabling students to then relate this knowledge of general vector fields to understand newly introduced vector fields.

Finding Derivatives from an Equipotential Graph

“…A common result from this research is that graphs can be difficult for students to interpret, especially graphs embedded in physical contexts. Similarly, how students understand partial derivatives has been studied in mathematics, chemistry, and physics contexts [7,11,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45]. A consistent finding across this body of research is that students often have strong procedural abilities but struggle with more conceptual topics.…”