Physicists see electromagnetism as one of the fundamental forces in the universe, and physics often includes a topic or module on 'electricity and magnetism'. Magnetism can be considered an electrodynamic effect (i.e. due to the movement of charges), but this may not be obvious to students.
Sophia was a participant in the Understanding Science Project. I spoke to here in Y7 (of the English school system) when she told me about the things she had been learning in the topic of electricity:
Anything else you’ve done on electricity?
The er, I don’t know what, it’s not that much to do with electricity but, yesterday or the day (before) we done magnets.
Oh right. So that’s a new topic, is it, not to do with electricity, or?
Well, I think we’re still doing electricity. I don’t know if it was just something – so we know what might, er, so we know what, what electricity will flow through, and maybe it’s something to do with - ‘cause magnets like stick to other things, they might be – I’m not sure, I think we might just have had a break from it, I don’t know, but.
So Sophia came up with some suggestions for why magnets were featured in the electricity topics, but she was not very convinced about this and considered it was quite possible just that the teacher was interspersing other material to give a 'break' from the main topic. When I asked her to tell me what she learnt about magnets she told me that the north pole and the south poles go together because one of them is coming out and one is going in.
Return to ECLIPSE homepage
List of science topics
Dr Keith S Taber kst24@cam.ac.uk
University of Cambridge Faculty of Education
© Keith S Taber, 2013