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What if Anything is Wrong Task - Force between Charges |
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.
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.
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)
What if Anything is Wrong
Task on Electric Charge (Physlet)
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.
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 version of this activty
Follow up tipers from homework assignments, test reviews and test items
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Last Updated: August 21, 2009