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A common way to represent an electric field in a course on electricity and magnetism is with the electric field line diagram. Some literature claims that students have difficulties understanding this representation and relating it to their understanding of the electric field concept. We conducted a study at the introductory level that aims to understand the effect of students' interpretation of electric field line diagrams on their application of the superposition principle for the electric field. The results give some evidence that an incorrect interpretation of the electric field line diagram may hinder the understanding of the superposition principle. Students who understand a vector representation of a field at a position tend to answer a superposition principle question better. We question whether teaching the electric field line representation is productive at the introductory level, and we discuss the need to have a representation that helps students reach a better understanding of the electric field concept and of the superposition principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this study is to identify students' difficulties with learning the concepts of electromotive force (emf) and potential difference in the context of transitory currents and resistive direct-current circuits. To investigate these difficulties, we developed a questionnaire based on an analysis of the theoretical and epistemological framework of physics, which was then administered to first-year engineering and physics students at universities in Spain, Colombia, and Belgium. The results of the study show that student difficulties seem to be strongly linked to the absence of an analysis of the energy balance within the circuit and that most university students do not clearly understand the usefulness of and the difference between the concepts of potential difference and emf. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of an instructional sequence intended to improve student understanding of Ampere's law among engineering students taking introductory physics. Participating students performed better on qualitative and quantitative test questions about Ampere's law than students in a similar class that devoted the same amount of time to the topic but followed traditional instruction. The results suggest that the strategy employed in the sequence can help students to apply and explain the relation between electrical currents and magnetic fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]