10. Fields

10. Fields

10.1 – Describing fields

Nature of science:

  • Paradigm shift: The move from direct, observable actions being responsible for influence on an object to acceptance of a field’s “action at a distance” required a paradigm shift in the world of science.

Understandings:

  • Gravitational fields

  • Electrostatic fields

  • Electric potential and gravitational potential

  • Field lines

  • Equipotential surfaces

Applications and skills:

  • Representing sources of mass and charge, lines of electric and gravitational force, and field patterns using an appropriate symbolism

  • Mapping fields using potential

  • Describing the connection between equipotential surfaces and field lines

10.2 – Fields at work

Nature of science:

  • Communication of scientific explanations: The ability to apply field theory to the unobservable (charges) and the massively scaled (motion of satellites) required scientists to develop new ways to investigate, analyse and report findings to a general public used to scientific discoveries based on tangible and discernible evidence.

Understandings:

  • Potential and potential energy

  • Potential gradient

  • Potential difference

  • Escape speed

  • Orbital motion, orbital speed and orbital energy

  • Forces and inverse-square law behaviour

Applications and skills:

  • Determining the potential energy of a point mass and the potential energy of a point charge

  • Solving problems involving potential energy

  • Determining the potential inside a charged sphere

  • Solving problems involving the speed required for an object to go into orbit around a planet and for an object to escape the gravitational field of a planet

  • Solving problems involving orbital energy of charged particles in circular orbital motion and masses in circular orbital motion

  • Solving problems involving forces on charges and masses in radial and uniform fields

Last updated