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Learning Electricity with NIELS: Thinking with Electrons and Thinking in Levels

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Abstract

Electricity is regarded as one of the most challenging topics for students of all ages. Several researchers have suggested that naïve misconceptions about electricity stem from a deep incommensurability (Slotta and Chi 2006; Chi 2005) or incompatibility (Chi et al. 1994) between naïve and expert knowledge structures. In this paper we argue that adopting an emergent levels-based perspective as proposed by Wilensky and Resnick (1999), allows us to reconceive commonly noted misconceptions in electricity as behavioral evidences of “slippage between levels,” i.e., these misconceptions appear when otherwise productive knowledge elements are sometimes activated inappropriately due to certain macro-level phenomenological cues only. We then introduce NIELS (NetLogo Investigations In Electromagnetism), a curriculum of emergent multi-agent-based computational models. NIELS models represent phenomena such as electric current and resistance as emergent from simple, body-syntonic interactions between electrons and other charges in a circuit. We discuss results from a pilot implementation of NIELS in an undergraduate physics course, that highlight the ability of an emergent levels-based approach to provide students with a deep, expert-like understanding of the relevant phenomena by bootstrapping, rather than discarding their existing repertoire of intuitive knowledge.

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Notes

  1. Note that in the literature that deals with learning and understanding complex systems, thinking at the individual level is sometimes referred to as “object-based,” and sometimes as “agent level” or “agent-based” (Wilensky and Resnick 1995, 1999; Chi 2005; Goldstone and Wilensky 2008). In this paper, we use these two terms (i.e., object and agent) interchangeably, when we refer to thinking at the level of the individual elements (such as an electron or an atom), interactions among which give rise to the emergent-level behaviors.

  2. Ohm’s law states that the total current (I) flowing inside a conductor is directly proportional to the amount of potential difference (V) across its ends, and inversely proportional to the resistance (R) of the material that the conductor is made of. It is expressed in symbolic terms as I = V/R.

  3. An example of such a phenomenon is why electric current is always equal in each wire of any series circuit, despite the wires being of different resistances. Our studies show that even young learners such as 5th graders, who are typically not introduced to equational representations, can understand and explain such phenomena using emergent, proportionality-based qualitative reasoning (Sengupta and Wilensky 2008a).

  4. Note that in subsequent iterations of NIELS, electrical resistance is represented in terms of inelastic collisions of free electrons with the atoms in the wire (NIELS Ohm’s Law Model, Sengupta and Wilensky 2007a).

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Acknowledgments

The authors would wish to thank Craig Brozefsky, Bruce Sherin, Josh Unterman, Ayush Gupta, David Hammer, Michelene Chi, Sharona Levy and all members of the CCL at Northwestern University for their insightful comments on this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Learning Sciences, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA

    Pratim Sengupta & Uri Wilensky

  2. Center for Connected Learning and Computer-based Modeling (CCL), Northwestern University, Evanston, USA

    Pratim Sengupta & Uri Wilensky

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA

    Uri Wilensky

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  1. Pratim Sengupta
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Sengupta, P., Wilensky, U. Learning Electricity with NIELS: Thinking with Electrons and Thinking in Levels. Int J Comput Math Learning 14, 21–50 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10758-009-9144-z

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