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184_projects:charge_the_line_24 [2024/01/05 20:00] – tdeyoung | 184_projects:charge_the_line_24 [2024/09/13 20:04] (current) – [Kick Off Questions] dmcpadden | ||
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- | ==== Project: Charge the Line ==== | + | ===== Project: Charge the Line ===== |
- | Your team has become trapped | + | ==== Kick Off Questions ==== |
+ | - What is superposition? | ||
+ | - If you had to calculate the electric field by hand (at a single observation point) from 3 point charges, what steps would you have to use? | ||
+ | - What is the difference between an insulator and conductor? | ||
+ | - Read through the main question and look at the given code block. Read through the code line-by-line as a group and write out in plain English words (or pseudocode) what each line does. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Main Problem ==== | ||
+ | Things have gotten weird in the town of Lakeview. After sighting the strange cloud earlier in the week, the clouds only become more frequent. The town and surrounding landscape are now under a constant barrage of storms, and there are rumors of strange creatures lurking in the woods near town. Several | ||
- | Mayor Rachel Wando is up for reelection and is willing to listen to any ideas to stop the rising death toll, but ever since the lightning storms started she has been in non-stop meetings in which electric fields are being constantly talked about. | + | Jo Harding, an eccentric local scientist who has had a few run-ins with storms before, has proposed putting up giant metal T's, with the base of the T inserted into the ground, to protect the townspeople from being struck by lightning. Jo wants the base of the T to be made of wood and the horizontal top of the T to be made of metal. |
- | The code below is the beginnings of your team's work on modeling the electric field from the giant T. Complete the program | + | The code below is the beginnings of your team's work on modeling the electric field from the giant T. Complete the program |
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- | Conceptual | + | ==== Wrap Up Questions |
- How do you know if your code is working correctly? | - How do you know if your code is working correctly? | ||
- | - What is superposition and how did you make use of it in the code? | + | - How did you make use of superposition |
- | - If you had to calculate the electric field by hand (at a single observation point), what steps would you have to use? | + | |
- | - What is the difference between an insulator and conductor? | + | |
- We assumed in this problem that the charge was divided equally among the spheres in our model. Is that a good assumption for conductors? Is that a good assumption for insulators? Why or why not? | - We assumed in this problem that the charge was divided equally among the spheres in our model. Is that a good assumption for conductors? Is that a good assumption for insulators? Why or why not? | ||
- If you change the radius for your observation points, what happens to your E-Field arrows? Is that expected? Why or why not? | - If you change the radius for your observation points, what happens to your E-Field arrows? Is that expected? Why or why not? | ||
+ | - Is this how real lightning rods work (metal connected to an insulator)? Would the T be an effective lightning rod? Why or why not? (Feel free to google how lightning rods work!) | ||
- What are the limitations of this model? How could you improve your model? | - What are the limitations of this model? How could you improve your model? |