2014/07/15 by Charles Baily, Baily, Charles, Cecilia Astolfi +1
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Experimental Learning in Engineering #Experimental and Theoretical Physics Studies #Science Education and Pedagogy #physics.ed-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1407.3888
4 pages, PERC Proceedings 2014 (accepted)
arxiv created 2014/09/30 · arxiv updated 2014/10/01
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.