Education Technology


Forces on Point Charges

Activity Overview

Students explore interactions between charged point particles. They first explore graphical vector addition and then use vector addition rules to explore the net forces on charged particles. The preconstructed templates used in this activity include charged particles and forces of interactions between the particles. When students change magnitudes of charges or distances between the particles, the vectors representing the forces of interaction change correspondingly.

Key Steps

  • Image

    First, students should open the TNS file and read the first two pages. They should then proceed to page 1.3, which contains an empty Graphs & Geometry page. Students should change the page to the Plane Geometry view (Menu > View > Plane Geometry View) and hide the scale (Menu > View > Hide Scale). It is recommended that students change the document settings for the angle measurements to be in degrees for this activity.