High School Students’ Difficulties and their Causes due to the Electromotive Force, in the Study of Direct Current Simple Electric Circuits

Authors

  • Gerasimos Vavasis National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
  • E.C. Kapotis National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
  • G.S. Tombras National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3991/ijes.v10i03.34375

Keywords:

dc electric circuits, high school students’ difficulties, electromotive force, potential difference, Ohm’s law, Kirchhoff's laws

Abstract


This work is part of a larger research, conducted in Greece, about the students' difficulties in understanding the concepts and phenomena of Electricity. The goal of this study is to present the high school students’ difficulties and their causes into the study of basic direct current (dc) circuits, due to the concept of the electromotive force (emf). Researches in over the world have highlighted that the concepts of the emf and the potential difference (pd) create many problems to the students in the study of dc circuits. These difficulties are presented, analyzed and is made an attempt to identify their causes. The results show that, in addition to confirming the existing literature enriched with new findings, to address these difficulties is necessary the development of a teaching approach based on an education model with a new curriculum, where needed (in Greece, for example) and an appropriate education material so that to overcome the lack of understanding of the concepts and laws shown by the students.

Author Biographies

E.C. Kapotis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Dr. Efstratios C. Kapotis is a postdoctoral researcher at the Physics Department at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He holds a Bachelor degree in Physics, Master Degree in “Science Education” and Ph.D. Degree in Physics Education and Digital Educational Technologies. He taught various undergraduate and graduate courses in Physics, Physics Education and the Integration of Computers in Education

G.S. Tombras, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Mr. George S. Tombras is Professor of Electronics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Director of the Laboratory of Electronic Physics and Chairman of the Faculty of Physics. He is also a member of the University Senate. He received his undergraduate degree (B.Sc.) in Physics from the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece, his M.Sc. degree in Electronics from the University of Southampton, UK, and the Ph.D. degree in Physics from the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki in 1979, 1981 and 1988.

Cover iJES Vol. 10 No. 03 (2022)

Downloads

Published

2022-11-04

How to Cite

Vavasis, G., Kapotis, E., & Tombras, G. (2022). High School Students’ Difficulties and their Causes due to the Electromotive Force, in the Study of Direct Current Simple Electric Circuits. International Journal of Recent Contributions from Engineering, Science & IT (iJES), 10(03), pp. 4–18. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijes.v10i03.34375

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 03 (2022)

Section

Papers

License

Copyright (c) 2022 Gerasimos Vavasis, Dr. Efstratios C. Kapotis , Mr. George S. Tombras

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The submitting author warrants that the submission is original and that she/he is the author of the submission together with the named co-authors; to the extend the submission incorporates text passages, figures, data or other material from the work of others, the submitting author has obtained any necessary permission.
Articles in this journal are published under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC-BY What does this mean?). This is to get more legal certainty about what readers can do with published articles, and thus a wider dissemination and archiving, which in turn makes publishing with this journal more valuable for you, the authors.
By submitting an article the author grants to this journal the non-exclusive right to publish it. The author retains the copyright and the publishing rights for his article without any restrictions.
This journal has been awarded the SPARC Europe Seal for Open Access Journals (What's this?)