Material Detail

We examine student understanding of the magnetic force exerted on a charged particle and report three findings from a series of tests administered to introductory physics students. First, we expand on previous findings that many students believe in ÔøΩchargedÔøΩ magnetic poles and find that although students may answer according to a model where a positive charge is attracted to a south pole and repulsed by a north, these students may not believe that the poles are charged. Additional models produce identical answer schemes, the primary being magnetic force parallel to magnetic field. Second, the representation format affects responses: students answer differently when the magnetic field is portrayed by a field source vs. by field lines. Third, after traditional instruction improvement in student performance is greater on questions portraying field lines than for questions portraying field sources.

This will delete the comment from the database. This operation is not reversible. Are you sure you want to do it?

Thank you for reporting a broken "Go to Material" link in MERLOT to help us maintain a collection of valuable learning materials.

If you feel this material is inappropriate for the MERLOT Collection, please click SEND REPORT, and the MERLOT Team will investigate. Thank you!

You are being taken to the material on another site. This will open a new window.

Do not show me this again