whitepapers:sequences:start

Short Sequences
Overarching Sequences

Short Sequences

In many cases, we use several activities in a carefully structured sequence, to help students see how information ties together. This is a major task for beginning upper-division learners. Short sequences are 3 or 4 activities that are used together to explore a particular topic from several different viewpoints.

E & M Sequences

Power Series Sequence Use a sequence of activities to introduce students to making approximations with power series expansions and help students exploit power series ideas to visualize the electrostatic potential due to a pair of charges. The final activity of this sequence is the first activity in the ring sequence.
Ring Sequence Use a sequence of activities with similar geometries to help students learn how to solve a hard activity by breaking it up into several steps. (A Master's Thesis about the Ring Sequence)
Plane Wave Sequence: Use a sequence of activities to help students understand what is planar about plane waves.
Representations of Fields Use a sequence of activities to develop students' geometrical understanding of electrostatic potentials and electric fields.
Visualizing Electrostatic Potentials
The Geometry of Flux Use a sequence of activities to help students develop a geometrical understanding of flux.
Gauss's and Ampère's Laws: Use a sequence of activities to help students understand how to use the integral form of Gauss's and Ampère's laws to find electric and magnetic fields in situations with high symmetry. These activities have a special emphasis on helping students make clean, coherent symmetry arguments and to use Proof by Contradiction.
The Differential Form of Maxwell's Equations: Use a sequence of activities to help students understand the differential versions of Maxwell's equations. Included are activities that address the geometric interpretations of flux, divergence, and curl and also derivations of the Divergence theorem, Stokes' theorem, and using these theorems to derive the differential versions of Maxwell's equations from the integral versions.
Boundary Conditions Use a sequence of activities to help students derive the boundary conditions for electromagnetic fields across charged surfaces or surface currents.