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Student reasoning about the divergence of a vector field

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Baily_2015_PERC_Student_CC.pdf (1.966Mb)
Date
28/04/2015
Author
Baily, Charles
Astolfi, Cecilia
Keywords
Physics education research
Electromagnetism
Divergence
Mathematics
Conceptual understanding
QC Physics
T-NDAS
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Abstract
Expanding our knowledge of student difficulties in advanced undergraduate electromagnetism is essential if we are to develop effective instructional interventions. Drawing on an analysis of course materials, in-class observations and responses to conceptual questions, we document specific resources employed by students when reasoning about the divergence of a vector field. One common student error, which persisted in our course despite explicit instruction, is to misinterpret any "spreading out" of field lines in a diagram as representing a place of non-zero divergence. Some of these student difficulties can likely be attributed to having first learned about the divergence in a mathematical context, where there was little emphasis on graphical representations of vector fields and connections to physical situations.
Citation
Baily , C & Astolfi , C 2015 , Student reasoning about the divergence of a vector field . in P V Engelhardt , A D Churukian & D L Jones (eds) , 2014 Physics Education Research Conference . PERC Proceedings , American Association of Physics Teachers , pp. 31-34 , Physics Education Research Conference 2014 , Minneapolis, MN , United States , 30/07/14 . https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2014.pr.004
 
conference
 
Publication
2014 Physics Education Research Conference
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2014.pr.004
ISSN
1539-9028
Type
Conference item
Rights
© 2014 American Association of Physics Teachers and the article authors. This material is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the published article's author(s), title, proceedings citation, and DOI.
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URL
http://www.compadre.org/per/items/detail.cfm?ID=13440
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~crb6/research/papers/Baily_PERC2014_SRDVF.html
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6759

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