Drawing Equipotential Surfaces

Highlights of the activity

1. This small group activity is designed to help students learn how to visualize an electrostatic potential field produced by multiple discrete charge sources.
2. Students draw the equipotential surfaces generated by a quadrupole.
3. The wrap-up discussion addresses how superposition is used, where the zero of potential is, and how to think of the surface as you get far away from the system of sources.

Reasons to spend class time on the activity

This activity helps students:

• recognize that $V$ is three-dimensional
• gain a deeper understanding of the superposition principle
• sort through the differences between electrostatic potential $V$ and electric field $\Vec E$.

Reflections

• Reflections from the original implementation.

• Reflections from "official" adapters/adopters.

• Reflections from the general public.

Instructor's Guide

• Wiki version

Student Handouts

vfdrawquadrupolehand.pdf

vfdrawquadrupolehand.tex