01.27 - 02.02

No one came to my office hours early Monday morning. And, during Wednesday's office hours, I was drinking hot chocolate and laying under my fuzzy blanket (classes were canceled).

But, today (Thursday), several students showed up. They all had specific (and different) questions, so it was a bit hard to manage everyone, especially because they came in at different times. I would like to work more collaboratively next time because I think everyone can benefit from others' questions.

1. A student who came to my office hour last Thursday was trying to understand how to draw the electric field for a semi-circular ring distribution with varying charge. I provided a comparison to a discrete system made up of several symmetric dipoles, explained fringing (and referenced her to the textbook's description), and provided some other examples of charge distributions to ensure she understood how to approach new problems like this. I find the whiteboard to be quite useful, but I need to remember to bring my own markers! 
2. Another student had a few questions related to the Sapling homework assignment on Gauss' Law. We solved a problem related to finding the electric field of an insulating cube using Gauss' law. It was challenging, and we made some mistakes as we worked through it together, but he assured me that struggling with it actually helped him understand the intricacies of the problem even better. We also worked on a problem related to the simplification of the electric field inside a conductor. Some understandable areas of confusion were surface area versus area and inside a conductor versus between conductors. Now that I have access to Sapling, I plan to at least take a look at the problems prior to my office hours. 
3. Another student had some conceptual questions about drawing the direction of electric fields, using positive test charges, and determining the force due to an electric field. I was able to make some abstract concepts more concrete by providing some comparisons to Physics 1 topics as well as explaining how I approach those sort of illustration problems.  
4. Another student from Prof. Busche's class had some questions as he worked through some book problems. These questions covered flux and Gauss' law and were more focused on concepts than math. Drawing clear pictures helped him understand what the questions were asking a little better.  

I also helped answer students' questions during Friday's exam.

Stay warm,
Cailyn