Drawing Electric Field Vectors

Highlights of the activity

1. This small small group is designed to help students use the superposition principle to visualize electric fields produced from multiple discrete charge sources.
2. Students draw the electric field generated by a quadrupole.
3. The whole class wrap-up discussion addresses how superposition is used and how the electric field relates to the gradient of the equipotential surfaces of this system.

Reasons to spend class time on the activity

Further develop student understanding of electric fields. This is a later follow up to the Potential of a Quadrupole.

Reflections

• Reflections from the original implementation.

• Reflections from "official" adapters/adopters.

• Reflections from the general public.

Instructor's Guide

• Wiki version