http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/physics/portfolioswiki/ 2020-01-27T04:44:23-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/physics/portfolioswiki/ http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/physics/portfolioswiki/lib/images/favicon.ico text/html 2008-01-02T22:28:03-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/physics/portfolioswiki/whitepapers:content:evectors:index?rev=1199341683 In the past, representations of electric fields in textbooks were almost always depictions of field lines, a representation that can be extremely powerful when applied to Gauss’s law and the concept of divergence. But students run into problems if this is the only representation in their mental toolbox when they attempt to understand electric fields as the gradients of potentials or when they study electromagnetic waves. What, exactly, is waving? The former emphasis on field lines arose in …