Enhancing Physics Knowledge for Teaching – Electric and Magnetic Fields

This session will introduce you to electric and magnetic fields. We’ll look at what we mean by a field and at what electric charge is and relate the two through Gauss’s theorem. From this we’ll derive Coulomb’s law for the force between charges. Then we’ll look at the concept of electrical potential which is related to the work done in moving a charge through a field. We’ll return to the notion of capacitance which we used in session 4, this time looking at how capacitance is computed. Finally we’ll take out first look at magnetism from the point of view of the magnetic effects of current.