Student Understanding of Electric and Magnetic
Fields in Materials
By Savannah L. Mitchem
Supervisor: Dr.
Eleanor C. Sayre
Kansas State University Physics Department REU Program
This work is
partially funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Air Force
Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) through NSF grant number PHYS-1461251. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions
or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do
not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF or AFOSR.
This summer, I researched how
upper division E&M students use conceptual resources to understand how
dielectric materials behave in electric and magnetic fields. I analyzed data in
the form of student test responses by observing relationships between which
resources students used and the degree to which they could answer conceptual
questions correctly. I also analyzed how these resource clusters changed with
time and context, specifically before and after targeted instruction of the
material.
A
full description of the research I participated in this summer is in the form
of the paper my group and I submitted to the American Journal of Physics. The
full paper can be downloaded at this address: http://arxiv.org/abs/1607.04662
Here
is an excerpt from the Summary and Conclusion section of the paper:
We found evidence to support
that thinking of polarization inside the atom seems to increase understanding
and can give students better intuition about special cases such as dielectric
breakdown without hurting their understanding of magnetization. These
implications for instruction can also apply to lower and higher level courses
than upper division E&M, and conceptual understanding of physical phenomena
on a microscopic scale could be a helpful supplement to math based curricula as
well. In conclusion, the goals of this study were to identify the clusters of
resources that successful students activated while answering an upper-level
conceptual problem in E&M, and to highlight the role of the instructor to facilitate
activation of those resources. We know that active learning environments paired
with conceptual curricula improve student understanding of physics, but
improved instructional methods are still needed to support students’ reasoning
in these areas, especially for upper division courses. Finally, our work
highlights the need for future research on students’ use of resources to solve
problems in these upper division physics courses.
About
Me: I am a physics major at Florida
State University in Tallahassee, FL. My research interest is primarily in
Physics Education, and I am highly considering becoming a physics educator at
the high school or university level.
The REU program at Kansas
State University has been an incredibly rewarding experience, and I would
recommend it to anyone who is interested in research and wants to be immersed
in it for a summer. I was able to submit my first research paper to a journal,
and I got a more complete idea about what the graduate school experience might
entail. Not only was it a worthwhile experience professionally, but I also met
countless awesome people who are excited about physics and research. The
program is very well organized, and the faculty are dedicated to making the
summer a great one academically and socially. Finally, Manhattan, KS, or “The
Little Apple” as they call it, is an enjoyable place to spend a summer. We
never ran out of things to do, and the surrounding area is rich with culture
and beauty. If you are applying to this program, specifically the Physics
Education Research REU, you will not regret it.
https://www.phys.ksu.edu/ksuper/index.html
Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank Dina Zohrabi Alaee for her constant
support and significant contribution to this research. Dina made this summer as
great as it was. I would also like to thank Dr. Sayre for her support and
patience as I learned the ropes of the research and publication processes.
Finally, I would like to thank the rest of the KSU Department of Physics for
going above and beyond to make this such a solid program.