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ERIC Number: EJ896118
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010-Sep
Pages: 3
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0031-921X
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Rephrasing Faraday's Law
Hill, S. Eric
Physics Teacher, v48 n6 p410-412 Sep 2010
As physics educators, we must often find the balance between simplicity and accuracy. Particularly in introductory courses, it can be a struggle to give students the level of understanding for which they're ready without misrepresenting reality. Of course, it's in these introductory courses that our students begin to construct the conceptual framework that they'll flesh out over a physics curriculum. So a misrepresentation at this early stage will seed difficulties and stubborn misconceptions that can persist or even strengthen through subsequent courses, especially since many upper-level texts focus more on "techniques" and would not directly challenge mistaken "concepts". In the worst cases, our students retain misunderstandings past graduation, and even pass them on to their own students. One important case is the common representation of Faraday's law as showing that a time-varying magnetic field "causes" a circulating electric field.
American Association of Physics Teachers. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740. Tel: 301-209-3300; Fax: 301-209-0845; e-mail: pubs@aapt.org; Web site: http://scitation.aip.org/tpt
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A