Studies on the Learning the Electric Field using Worksheets Printed by the Computer - Some Applications of the Computer -

Abstract

There are some difficulties in teaching high school pupils the electric field by lecture only, because of its abstractness. Though the demonstration or the pupil's experiments are useful in this topic, the author introduced the worksheets in which the pupils do some "works" to draw the electric lines and equipotencial lines, instead of the experiments. The worksheets were made by the author using the computer. He calculated the electric potencial values at the various points in the plane located some electric point charges, and printed them on the worksheets so that pupils can draw the equipotencial and electric lines by tracing them. Through "works" as mentioned above and the observations of the lines of electric forces demonstrated by flower seeds in various stages, pupils can easily understand the meanings of the electric field better than before. And Gauss's law which is concerned with the flux of the electric field, and also is abstract concept, can easily be proved by using the worksheets. Applications of the computer to these topics in high school seemed to be useful from the point of pupil's activities.