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by Corinne Manogue

  • This year (2008), students commented that they had trouble with a similar exercise for Gauss's law, but that, by the time they had finished this exercise, they understood both.

by Mary Bridget Kustusch

  • This year (Fall 2011), we started this activity by doing the infinite sheet of current with finite thickness as an example. The advantage to this was a chance to really emphasize the symmetry arguments. However, it did drag on a little and may have been unnecessary for many of the students. I think it would work better to use the example to walk through the symmetry arguments and to ask them what Amperian loop we would want to use, but to stop there. This takes them from an inverse problem to a point where you can pull B out of the integral. Then, if students are really struggling with the integral or with finding the current, you can stop the class and continue working on the example.

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