Magnets are not much to do with electricity

Keith S. Taber

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 will 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. I asked her,

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 might be featured in the electricity topic, but she was not very convinced about this rationale, and considered it was quite possible that the teacher was just interspersing other material to give a 'break' from the main topic. So, instead, they "done magnets".

It is interesting that one of Sophia's suggestions was "what electricity will flow through". The constructivist theory of learning ( read about constructivism here) suggests that meaningful learning involves learners making sense of what they are taught by linking it to their existing ideas and wealth of past experiences. This is a creative process, and sometimes students make unhelpful associations, that can act as learning impediments. Although ceramic magnets are increasingly common, iron, a good conductor, and its alloys, are still used for bar and horseshoe magnets that children will often be familiar with – so this association has potential to be built on constructively.

Of course electricity and magnetism were at one time considered quite distinct phenomena by scientists – and James Clerk Maxwell is rightly remembered for his synthesising theoretical work showing that electricity, magnetism and light could all be understood as manifestations of a single underlying 'phenomenon' of electromagnetism. (Indeed it seems stretching then notion of phenomena to refer to electromagnetism as a single phenomenon, as no one would intuitively perceive its manifestations as being observations of the same phenomenon!) We can hardly expect students to appreciate why electricity and magnetism might be considered a unitary physics topic in school science.

To the science teacher, magnetism is an electrical effect, and electromagnetism is one of the fundamental forces in nature. The unification of electricity, magnetism, and electromagnetic radiation is seen as a major integrative step forwards in science–but our students are not going to see the connections without some help.

Taber, 2014, p.169

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.