Session:
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The Role and Implementation of Upper-level E&M
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Paper Type:
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Contributed
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Title:
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Integration in Electrostatics with a Computational Perspective
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Meeting:
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2014 Summer Meeting: Minneapolis, Minnesota |
Location:
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N/A |
Date:
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Time:
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2:10PM
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Author:
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David Roundy, Oregon State University
5412500137, roundyd@physics.oregonstate.edu
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Co-Author(s):
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Eric J. Krebs, Jeff B. Schulte
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Abstract:
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Many students struggle to understand and use the principles of "chopping and adding" when integrating over a charge distribution to
find the electrostatic potential or electric field. I will introduce a sequence of computational lab activities that help students to
better grasp these concepts by writing python programs to compute these quantities numerically. Thus the students are literally adding
up the potential (or field) due to small chunks of charge, which provides a perspective on integration in three dimensions that is
complementary to the perspective students bring from their calculus courses. Theses activities have been developed as part of a laboratory course that runs parallel to the Paradigms in Physics sequence, and teaches the same physics content. However, the activities and the course should require little modification to work alongside a traditional course in electromagnetism. This work is funded by the NSF grant DUE-1141330.
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Footnotes:
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None
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Presentation:
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Roundy-electrostatics.pdf
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