Electricity and magnetism are fundamental areas of physics and are integral to science curricula at various educational levels. However, this area has been reported to contain several concepts that students find challenging, leading to perspectives that diverge from scientifically accepted views. This study examines the errors made by physics…

Electric charges and magnetic poles are often confused in the minds of students. It is convenient to remind them that they only interact when they are in relative motion. The force F on a charged particle q moving with velocity V in a magnetic field B is given by F = qVxB. By Newton's Third Law, the force on magnet producing the field B is equal…

The demand for improving student interest in science has increased efforts toward teaching Einstein's theory of general relativity in schools. Research has already shown that teaching Einsteinian gravity at the secondary level is feasible, however, appropriate resources must be readily available for science teachers to make Einsteinian gravity…

Electromagnetic (EM) waves are indispensable in modern telecommunications. Despite their essential role in modern technology, EM waves are considered to be an abstract concept by many students. In this activity, an inexpensive two-coil system was constructed in a teaching laboratory and used to demonstrate information transfer by non-sinusoidal EM…

This study established whether 12 South African secondary school physics students had incorrect conceptions of basic magnetism and if they had, to what extent they consistently applied such conceptions. Different scenarios in the form of thought experiments were presented in a clinical interview approach. A complex systems perspective underpinned…

This work is aimed to assess the performance of two groups of students from colleges of Science, Education and Engineering on the understanding of electricity and magnetism concepts. To conduct this assessment, the Electricity and Magnetism Conceptual Assessment (EMCA) test was implemented twice as a pre-test and a post-test for two calculus-based…

The present study aims to find out the agreement rates of students on non-scientific ideas concerning the concept of magnet with a cross sectional survey. A total of 436 students studying in the final years of elementary (n=113), middle (n=110), high school (n=105) and university (n=108) participated in the study. Data were collected with the help…

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of active learning on students' achievement in the unit of magnetism. It is important to create proper teaching environments in order to ensure the active participation of students in learning processes. Many different methods and techniques may be used for active participation. Detailed…

A simple model of parallel motion of two point charges and the subsequent analysis of the electromagnetic field transformation invariant quantity are considered. It is shown that ignoring the coupling of electric and magnetic fields, as is done in some introductory physics books, can lead to miscalculations of the force between moving charges.…

For many students, introductory physics is an enormous hurdle to cross in their educational careers. Studies show that many students struggle with basic vector concepts and hold misconceptions of fundamental principles like Newton's laws, ideas essential to the understanding of higher-order physics concepts and for achieving success in engineering…

The Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) is a widely used multiple-choice instrument measuring a student's conceptual understanding of electricity and magnetism. This study applied modified module analysis (MMA) and modified module analysis-partial (MMA-P), network analytic methods that identify groups of correlated responses, to…

Analogical reasoning is central to all learning, whether in daily life situations, in the classroom or while doing research. Although analogies can aid the learning process of making sense of phenomena and understanding new ideas in terms of known ideas, these should be used with care. This article reports a study of the use of analogies and the…

Electromagnetic induction is an important, yet complex, physics topic that is a part of Croatian high school curriculum. Nine Croatian high school students of different abilities in physics were interviewed using six demonstration experiments from electromagnetism (three of them concerned the topic of electromagnetic induction). Students were…

Questions often arise as to how a device attached to a transformer can draw power from the electrical power grid since it seems that the primary and secondary are not connected to one another. However, a closer look at how the primary and secondary are linked together magnetically and a consideration of the role of Lenz's law in this linkage…

In this paper, I discuss a "misconception" in magnetism so simple and pervasive as to be typically unnoticed. That magnets have poles might be considered one of the more straightforward notions in introductory physics. However, the magnets common to students' experiences are likely different from those presented in educational…