Letting students discover the power, and the limits, of simple models: Coulomb’s

law
Peter Bohacek, Matthew Vonk, Joseph Dill, and Emma Boehm

Citation: The Physics Teacher 55, 380 (2017); doi: 10.1119/1.4999742

View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.4999742
View Table of Contents: http://aapt.scitation.org/toc/pte/55/6
Published by the American Association of Physics Teachers
 Dolores Gende, Column Editor
talkin’ physics North Broward Preparatory School, Coconut Creek, FL; dgende@gmail.com

Letting students discover

the power, and the limits, of
simple models: Coulomb’s
law
Peter Bohacek, Henry Sibley High School
Matthew Vonk, University of Wisconsin River Falls
Joseph Dill and Emma Boehm, Henry Sibley High School
students

T he inverse-square law pops up all over. It’s a simplified

model of reality that describes light, sound, gravity,
and static electricity. But when it’s brought up in class, stu-
dents are often just handed the equations. They rarely have
an opportunity to discover Coulomb’s law or Newton’s law of
gravitation for themselves. It’s not hard to understand why. A
quantitative demonstration of Coulomb’s law can be difficult.
The forces are smaller than many force sensors can measure
and static electricity tends to be finicky. In addition, off-the-
shelf units are expensive or difficult to use. As a result, many
instructors skip this lab in favor of qualitative demonstra-
tions or simulations. Adolf Cortel sought to remedy this by
designing a straightforward experiment for measuring Cou-
lomb’s law using charged metalized-glass spheres (Christmas
ornaments) and an electronic balance.1 Building on Cortel’s
design, we’ve made a series of video-based experiments that
students can use to discover the relationships that underlie
electric force.
Students start by selecting the sign of the charge on each
glass sphere. There are four possibilities (+/+, +/-, -/+, and
-/-). Then students can measure the force between the spheres
by reading the electronic balance and can measure the separa-
tion distance between the spheres using an interactive ruler.
As the video progresses, the spheres are brought closer to-
gether so that students can see how the force depends on sepa-
ration distance. In the Pivot Interactives platform (Fig. 1), stu-
dents are able to collect and analyze data in about 20 minutes
that clearly show an inverse-squared relationship. Students are
introduced to a simplified model of an abstract concept in a
way that is concrete and operational. But perhaps even better
is that Cortel’s design allows introductory students to explore
what happens when the simple model starts to fail.
Figure 2 shows the force between the two positively
charged spheres plotted as a function of the inverse square
of their separation distance (measured on center). Casual
inspection shows that the relationship is reasonably straight,
but at the same time there is a noticeable downward curve.
This indicates that the force is not as large as expected when
the spheres are brought close together (i.e., when 1/r2 is large).
While students are quick to point to the defeatist human error
Fig. 1. This frame, from a video-based Pivot Interactives experi-
ment, shows an electronic balance measuring the electric force
of the top sphere on the bottom sphere.
Fig. 2. This graph shows the electric force on the bottom sphere
(see Fig. 1) as a function of the inverse square of the separation
distance between the centers of the spheres. The force starts
out quite linear, indicating a 1/r2 dependence, but at close range
(when 1/r2 is large) the force has a noticeable downward curve.
explanation as the cause for any disparity in lab, for scien-
tists, discrepant events are where the fun begins. Unexpected
results give our students the chance to brainstorm possible
explanations, then devise and execute experiments to rule out
incorrect ones. Holmes, Wieman, and Bonn2 have shown that
this process prepares students for autonomous decision mak-
ing and develops critical thinking skills. [Author’s note: We’d
encourage readers to pause at this point to devise possible
explanations for the graph above, and then think of experi-
ments that could be performed to rule each one out.]
One possibility for the unexpected data is that the effect
is not real but rather an artifact of high experimental uncer-
tainty. By ruling that out as a possibility, students gain confi-
dence and become invested in finding the actual source of the
discrepancy. With a little encouragement, students can come
up with a number of possible causes: the effect of air (either as
a frictional force, or as a dielectric material), leaking charge,
gravity, saturation of the balance, or a polarization of charge
on the spheres. Students can then design experiments to rule

380 The Physics Teacher ◆ Vol. 55, September 2017 DOI: 10.1119/1.4999742

Fig. 3. This graph represents the electric force on the bottom
sphere (see Fig. 1) when the spheres have charges of opposite
signs. Like Fig. 2, the force starts out quite linear but then gets
stronger than expected. This upward curve rules out many of the
possible explanations that might have explained the downward
curve in Fig. 2.
out each one of these explanations.3
In order to rule out the possibility of charge leakage,
students can advance to the end of the video so that the ball
returns to its starting point. Doing this, students find that the
force has in fact decreased by 16%. That seems promising, but
may not be sufficient to explain the 29% close-range discrep-
ancy. The other explanations can be ruled out by repeating the
experiment with oppositely charged spheres. When students
do that, they find the force is larger than expected when the
spheres are close to each other. This allows students to rule
out air effects, leaking charge, and maxing out the scale.
While an increasing gravitational force between the
spheres as they approach each other would produce the cor-
rect qualitative result (tending to oppose the repulsion of +/+
spheres and augmenting the attraction of +/- spheres), the
force is much too weak to explain the observed effect. An-
other possibility is that the charge distribution on the spheres
changes, with the charges on the bottom sphere moving away
from the top sphere when they have the same sign and to-
Fermi Questions
w Question 1: Trees in the world
How many trees are there in the world?
The Physics Teacher ◆ Vol. 55, September 2017
talkin’ physics
ward the top sphere when they have opposite signs. At large
distances this effect would be minimal, but at close range it
would tend to strengthen attractive forces (since the charges
move closer to each other) and weaken repulsive forces.
That’s exactly what we see. Continuing the process, students
are prompted to think of a test that could invalidate the po-
larization hypothesis. For example, students can use their
force data to calculate an effective separation distance for the
charges at close range and then verify that those distances are
consistent with the physical dimensions of the spheres (they
are).
It’s immensely gratifying to solve a scientific mystery like
this, but the iterative process that it requires is not merely a
pleasurable tangent for interested eccentrics; in science, it’s
the main event. Holmes, Wieman, and Bonn argue that in
order for students to learn the critical thinking process, it’s not
enough to just watch someone else go through the steps. Rath-
er, students need to work through the process themselves in a
way that is “deliberate and repeated with targeted feedback.”
This lab provides an excellent opportunity to do just that.
Although there are no insurmountable difficulties that
prevent this lab from being done with physical equipment,
our video-based version of this lab, which combines videos of
all four charge combinations, teacher-modifiable instructions,
interactive measurement tools, and integrated data tables and
graphs will be available this fall from Pivot Interactives.4
References
1. Adolf Cortel, “Demonstrations of Coulomb’s law with an elec-
tronic balance,” Phys. Teach. 37, 447 (Oct. 1999).
2. N. G. Holmes, Carl Wieman, and D. A. Bonn, “Teaching critical
thinking,” http://www.pnas.org/content/112/36/11199.full.pdf.
3. Eugenia Etkina and Gorazd Planinšič, “Defining and develop-
ing ‘critical thinking’ through devising and testing multiple ex-
planations of the same phenomenon,” Phys. Teach. 53, 432 (Oct.
2015).
4. Pivot Interactives, http://www.pivotinteractives.com.
Larry Weinstein, Column Editor
Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529;
weinstein@odu.edu
w Question 2: Grains of sand
How many grains of sand are there on all the beaches
in all the world?
Look for the answers online at tpt.aapt.org. Ques-
tion suggestions are always welcome! For more
Fermi questions and answers, see Guesstimation 2.0:
Solving Today's Problems on the Back of a Napkin,
by Lawrence Weinstein (Princeton University Press,
2012).
DOI: 10.1119/1.4999743
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