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Potentially Electric: An E-Textiles Project As A Model For Teaching Electric Potential, Doug Ball, Colby Tofel-Grehl

Teacher Education and Leadership Faculty Publications

Electric potential is one of the most challenging concepts taught in high school physics classes due to the abstract nature of the concept.¹ When taught, electric potential is often taught using a poorly triangulated set of instructional analogies, each possessing different strengths and limitations. Within this paper we share our learning from a two-week electronic textiles (e-textiles) unit designed to help students in an AP high school physics course improve their understanding of electric potential through the construction of a project entitled “The Slouching T-shirt” (STS) (Fig. 1). The STS project was part of a larger instructional unit on …