Visuo-Haptic Simulations to Understand the Dependence of Electric Forces on Distance

In this paper, the potential of visuo-haptic simulators to help engineering students to understand the nature of electric forces between different electric charge distributions is addressed. Three visuo-haptic simulators were designed to perceive the attractive–repulsive behavior as well as the dependence on distance of electrical forces for: (a) point charge, (b) line charge, and (c) plane charge. Design elements were incorporated to improve the 3D perception of the simulators. A sample of N = 111 engineering students practiced with the simulators: 87 enrolled in an Electricity and Magnetism course and 24 enrolled in a more advanced Electromagnetic Fields course. Pre-test and Post-test were applied before and after working with the simulators and average learning gains were obtained. t-tests were performed to determine the statistical significance of the results. Significant learning gains were obtained for the comprehension of the force dependence in the case of line charge and plane charge, but not for the point charge, due to the fact that most students started with very high Pre-test scores in this last case. These results suggest that the use of visuo-haptic simulators may help students to better identify the dependence of electric forces on distance. It was also observed that the potential effect of improving the recognition of electric interactions was higher among students with lower previous familiarity with these topics, as compared to more advanced students. Through exit surveys, it was found that the students liked very much the haptic activity and that it sparked their interest in learning new physical concepts.