Teaching Critical Thinking: An Example From Electricity And Magnetism

As I discussed in this post the other day, I believe that an excellent way to teach critical thinking is to present students with statements that are muddled, garbled, confused, poorly written, or just plain wrong, and instruct them to identify the errors and correct the statements. How can we train students to be critical … Read more

Sense And Nonsense In Elementary Electricity And Magnetism

Today my students wrote the final exam in the first-year university course in electricity and magnetism (+ a two-week introduction to quantum physics at the end of the course) that I taught this past semester. I reproduce the first question on the exam below. Worth 20% of the marks on the exam (each of the … Read more