JiTT using Physlets: Introductory Electricity and Magnetism

Ampere's Law

Honors Preflight #18

This preflight helps the students begin to wrestle with a number of things -- the meaning of Ampere's Law, the physical interpretation of a line integral, exactly what a line integral is and how to calculate it, etc. Many students come to class quite confused about these things, especially after being forced to face their lack of detailed knowledge as they attempt the preflight, but they do, by and large, come to class ready to try to make sense out of it all.

We've found that this combination of using/showing still images (snapshots) from the Physlet in concert with "try this" and "do that" types of actual Physlet-based activities helps the students stay on-task in a particularly meaningful and productive way. More of our preflight questions will move in this direction in the future.