Peer Review

MIT Physics 8.02: Faraday's Law

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Reviewed:: Jan 28, 2007 by Physics

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:: This collection of 16 animations and simulations covers the topic of Faraday's law and induction. They illustrate the currents and fields induced by moving magnets and changing magnetic fields. This is part of collection of simiilar resources used for a studio-format course on electricity and magnetism taught at MIT.
Type of Material:: These materials are video, java animations, and interactive simulations of physical phenomena.
Recommended Uses:: These materials can be used for lecture demonstrations and online illustrations for homework assignments. They are also useful for illustrations of laboratory experiments. The related MIT Open Courseware site contains lecture notes, labs, and in-class questions that use these multimedia resources.
Technical Requirements:: These animations are in mpg, wmv, and java version 1.4.
Identify Major Learning Goals:: The animations can be used by students to explore and develop conceptual models about induced electric fields and the resultant currents and magnetic fields.
Target Student Population:: Introductory undergraduate physics. Some of these materials can be used in high school classes.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: Introduction to electric and magnetic fields and currents.

Content Quality

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Strengths:

These resources provide excellent illustrations of both relatively simple and very complex physical phenomena. The illustrations are clear and concise, showing important physical properties. The physics displayed is very difficult to illustrate accurately without tools such as these.

Users can control the physical parameters of the system to explore their impact. The three dimensional nature of these illustrations add to their power for developing conceptual models.

The systems simulated are both realistic and complicated, illustrating the power of the combination of physics and computation to predict the behavior of real systems. This moves the class beyond the simple, analytically solvable problems usually covered in introductory classes.

Concerns:

Most of the illustrations are qualitative, not giving numeric results. The qualitative behavior of systems is illustrated in detail.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:: This material can be used to develop conceptual understanding both in and outside of class. The clear illustrations can help students build mental models of magnetic fields and induction. This collection and the related MIT Open Courseware (OCW) site contain notes and activities related to these illustrations. The OCW site also includes class questions that can be used in interactive lectures.
Concerns:: The qualitative nature of these materials, and the complex nature of the physical systems being modeled, mean that they will be difficult to use for quantitative assignments.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:
Strengths:: These illustrations operate flawlessly. No instructions are necessary to view the videos or operate the simulations.
Concerns:: The rendering of the "Iron Filings" view on the simulations can take some time. Students might be warned to let this complete.
In the simulation windows there is a "Help" tool bar item that does not contain any information.

Other Issues and Comments:: The Guided Tour of electricity and magnetism is an excellent example of how the illustrations created for this class can be used to enhance text materials.
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