The Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism ͑CSEM͒ was developed to assess students' knowledge about topics in electricity and magnetism. The survey is a 32-question, multiple-choice test that can be used as both a pretest and posttest. During four years of testing and refinement, the survey has been given in one form or another to more than 5000 introductory physics students at 30 different institutions. Typical pretest results are that students in calculus-based courses get 31% of the questions correct and student's in algebra/trigonometry-based courses average 25% correct. Posttest correct results only rise to 47% and 44%, respectively. From analysis of student responses, a number of student difficulties in electricity and magnetism are indicated.

No abstract

No abstract

A significant portion of the recent work in the field of physics education research has been concerned with the identification of alternate conceptions (Driver and Easley, 1978) that students have about physical systems. Most of this work has been concentrated in the area of mechanics. There has been some work done in the area of electricity and magnetism but, by comparison, this area has received relatively little attention. The author reports on a study designed to determine if student difficulties in understanding the interactions of electric charges with magnetic fields might be caused, at least in part, by an alternate conception. In discussions among physics teachers one often hears several reasons proposed for these difficulties. One reason given is that magnetic force situations are three dimensional. A second one is that the right hand rule is an unusual procedure which is often misunderstood. These matters are almost certainly involved, but might there not also be some alternate conception causing students difficulty? The purpose of the study was to determine whether the students thought of magnetic poles as exerting forces directly on electric charges, in a manner similar to the behaviour of electrostatic charges.

This article presents a new format for physics problems that is similar to the game show Jeopardy in which contestants are given the answer to a question and asked to state the question. In Physics Jeopardy, the problem starts with a mathematical equation, a graph or a diagram that describes a physical process. The solver constructs other representations of the problem including a word or picture description of a problem and process that is consistent with the equation, graph, or diagram. The Jeopardy Problem solution becomes an effort to represent a physical process in a variety of ways—sketches, diagrams, graphs, and equations—more like the method used by experienced physicists when analyzing problems.