2016/02/16 by Jing Li, Chandralekha Singh · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #physics.ed-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1063/1.3680040
published as Proceedings of the Physics Education Research Conference, Omaha, NE, AIP Conference Proceedings, Melville, New York 1413, 243-246 (2012) · 4 pages
arxiv created 2016/02/16 · arxiv updated 2016/02/17
We discuss an investigation exploring students' difficulties with equations involving resistance, capacitance and inductance. We find that introductory physics students have great difficulty understanding, e.g., how the resistance of an ohmic resistor can be written in terms of the potential difference across it and the current through it, but it does not change when the potential difference across the resistor is varied. Similar confusions arose in problems relating to capacitors and inductors. We discuss these difficulties with equations in the context of introductory physics students' performance on questions about circuit elements both in the free-response and multiple-choice formats.