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Appendix
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Assessment: Learning Outcomes
Introductory electricity & magnetism laboratory students should be prepared
for leadership roles in an increasingly diverse, technological and highly
competitive world. To this end, these students should…

Understand the role of science in our society.
o There is electronic circuitry all around us in the walls of our buildings, in the
gadgets we carry, in our transportation & communication, in life-saving medical
equipment, and even within our own bodies.
o How charges flow through metals freely or become deposited on objects is the
basis for the majority of our technology. An elementary understanding of charge
separation is essential for modern chemistry and biology and many other fields.
o How charged conductors produce electric fields or equivalently how they
produce electric potential landscapes helps students understand how the
electric field actually permeates the space we live in.
o How charged plates can accelerate and steer moving charges, a concept widely
used in older technologies.
o How Ohm’s law allows one to quickly unravel the nature of common circuitry
that live in our gadgets and machines.
o How the quantum mechanics of semiconductors has given us personal
electronics and high-speed computing.
o How a capacitor can store energy for later use in an electric field.
o How a sinusoidal alternating current works to power circuit components and
causes sinusoidal responses in the components of the circuit.
o How motors function, how they are designed, and how to measure their
properties.
o How a solenoid affects an AC circuit allowing electrical energy to be stored in a
magnetic field.
o The resonance behavior of an RLC circuit that allows devices to be tuned to
specific frequencies.
o The mutual inductance of transformers that carry energy across the world.

Have a firm grasp of the theories that form the basis of electricity and magnetism.
o Use Gauss’s Law to understand electric potential in circuits as conservation of
energy.
o Use Gauss’s Law to understand how charges are transported in physical systems.
o Relating a stationary vector field to its corresponding scalar potential field.
o Relating voltage differences to electric fields, forces and accelerations of charged
particles.
o Using Ohm’s Law to predict total circuit properties and individual component
properties.
o Experimentally testing Ohm’s law to solidify conceptual understanding and to be
exposed to the interplay of electricity & magnetism and quantum mechanics.
o Use differential equations and their solutions to model and understand circuit
behavior.
o Use differential equations and their solutions to model and understand circuit
behavior.
o Use concepts of magnetism to understand motors.
o Use of Faraday’s Law, Ampere’s Law and Lenz’s Law.
o Use trigonometric functions to model a complex circuit.
o Use of Faraday’s law.

Be able to apply the principles of physics to solve real world problems.
o Design an experiment to find how resistance adds in series vs. parallel.
o Design an experiment to find how macroscopic charge separation works on a
large conductor.
o Design an experiment to find how a cathode ray conductor produces an electric
field that may accelerate charged particles.
o Design an experiment to probe the hidden structure of a cathode ray tube.
o Design an experiment to analyze the microscopic electrical properties of an
unknown material.
o Design an experiment to analyze the microscopic electronic properties of an
unknown device.
o Design an experiment to analyze the behavior of compound capacitors.
o Design an experiment to build and measure a homemade capacitor.
o Build a working motor and design an experiment to analyze its behavior.
o Design an experiment to maximize mutual inductance.
o Design an experiment to determine the anti-resonant behavior of an multiplecomponent circuit.
o Transmit and detect sound ways through the air (using radio waves). Also to
detect ambient electromagnetic radiation and determine its frequency.

Be familiar with basic laboratory equipment, and should be able to design and carry out
experiments to answer questions or to demonstrate principles.
o Skills developed throughout lab especially the open-ended component.
o Use of DMM, electroscope, Faraday ice pale, wires with various types of leads,
resistors, capacitors, inductors/solenoids, modern digital oscilloscopes, function
generators, RF modulators, antennae, motors, and magnets/compasses.

Be able to communicate their results through written reports.
o Throughout the semester, students write six biweekly unit-themed lab reports
using general and specific writing guidelines. Though a revision/editing process
is untenable, students will be given their first graded report in advance of the
due date of their second report so they can learn from mistakes, discuss
alternate writing strategies with the TA, etc.
Graduates of the introductory electricity & magnetism laboratory should…

Have a broad education that will allow them to succeed in diverse fields such as
business, law, medicine, science, writing, etc.
o Writing skills, critical thinking skills, creative problem-solving skills,
communicating ideas & information, teamwork skills, leadership skills, working
with time constraints.

Have mastered the introductory theoretical techniques and electricity and magnetism
experimental techniques that are commonly expected for students at this level. Across
the world, all introductory electricity and magnetism students must be able to:
o Apply Gauss’s Law to find the electric field. Wire circuit components in series
and parallel. Use a DMM to measure current, voltage & resistance. Reason
about global circuit properties based upon the arrangement of the components.
o Understand polarization, use the process of induction, use an electrometer and
Faraday ice pail, and calculate the attractive electrostatic force caused by
polarization.
o Understand how an energy landscape produces forces or equivalently how an
electric potential landscape produces electric fields and use voltage
measurements to calculate an electric field.
o Calculate how voltages accelerate charged particles and carry out a long and
complex mathematical derivation.
o Understand how to analyze a circuit built from Ohmic components and build
Ohmic circuits and measure their properties.
o Use an oscilloscope to measure rapidly changing voltages, build circuits and
measure their properties.
o Use a digital oscilloscope to investigate RC circuits driven with square waves and
sinusoidal waves.
o Use a digital oscilloscope to investigate RL circuits driven with sinusoidal waves.
o Use a digital oscilloscope to investigate RLC circuits and radio transmission
principles.
o Design simple radios.

Be familiar with the principles and practice of engineering and should be able to apply
their knowledge to solve state of the art problems, both individually and as part of a
team.
o Individuals must be able to
 Make a light bulb work.
 Use a compass to label the poles of a magnet.
 Measure voltage to find an electric field.
 Predict the behavior of moving charges in a magnetic field.
 Build and test simple circuits.
 Build a working motor.
 Build a resonating circuit to detect ambient radio waves.
o Teams must devise an experiment to
 Measure the equivalent resistance of parallel components.
 Measure the macroscopic charge separation across a large conductor in
the presence of an electric field.
 Determine the acceleration on a charged particle by the electric field
produced by charged cathode ray plates.
 Determine the hidden arrangement of conducting plates in a cathode ray
tube.
 Determine the resistivity of Nichrome wire.
 Determine if a grain-of-wheat bulb is Ohmic.
 Determine the behaviors of multiple capacitors.
 Build and measure a capacitor.
 Measure the properties of a motor.
 Maximize mutual inductance.
 Discover the anti-resonance of a parallel RLC circuit.
 Broadcast sound waves through the air to a receiver.
Other