What if Anything is Wrong Task - Force between Charges

Activity Description

This activity makes use of the physlet for Exercise in the Physlet Physics book. Four charges are brought near each other pairwise. One set of charges has an interaction set so that the force between them contradicts the sign of the charges.

Target Conceptual Difficulty

The reason we know that there are at least two types of charge is because of the attractive and repulsive behavior of the force between charges.

PowerPoint

What if Anything is Wrong Task on Electric Charge with a follow up Contending students task not linked to a simulation. (TurningPoint)
What if Anything is Wrong Task on Elecctric Charge with a follow up Contending students task not linked to a simulation. (iClicker)

Simulation

What if Anything is Wrong Task on Electric Charge (Physlet)

Presentation Notes

After describing the simulation, the charges are dragged near to each other to show the force as exhibited by a vector. Students need to take notes on the intreractions. I initially used this as the first activity in the semester. It was too much too soon and would do the induced polarization activity first in the future, which is why I listed it that way.

Student Results

Even though the forces obeyed Newton's third law, most students (48%) identified an error with only one charge.

Only 30% of students correctly identified the flawed interaction as being between charged B and D. The most common response (36%) was that the problem was with the charge pair B and C.

Pen and Paper Actvivities

Pen and Paper version of this activty

Follow up tipers from homework assignments, test reviews and test items

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Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2005 - 2009 by Paul Williams
Last Updated: August 21, 2009