Subject: Electrical Flow

Posted by Bill Barroway on 3/11/2004
In Reply To:Electrical Flow Posted by Niall Palfreyman on 3/11/2004

Message:

Actually, I think what you have done is best. electricity is different from water flow because it is compressible. charge Q accumulates differentially in wires and this difference is related to potential difference, aka voltage, by Q=CV, where C is the capacitance. Most of the time this is only noticable with AC circuits.

A few years ago Mel Steinberg (smith college) developed the CASTLE materials (Capacitor Aided somethingorother for Learning Electricity) that exploited large capacitors to help students develop more accurate mental models of electricity.

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