Students’ conversion from electric field line diagrams to other representations

Abstract

In electricity and magnetism (E&M) courses, students have difficulties understanding the concept of electric field. Because of its abstract nature, students can only understand the concept of electric field through the use of representations, such as the algebraic notation, the vector field representation and electric field lines diagrams. We aim to analyze how students understand the concept of electric field when converting from electric field lines diagrams to the vector field plot and to the algebraic notation. We conducted a study with 64 introductory engineering physics students after their E&M course. Students answered a question shown with an electric field lines diagram and were asked to convert to either the vector field plot or the algebraic notation. We analyzed students’ answers based on how they recognize the magnitude and direction of the field in the diagram and convert to the desired representations. The results suggest that most students have difficulties interpreting the electric field lines diagram.