Visualization of electric field lines in an engineering education context

The electromagnetic theory presents a unifying explanation of electric and magnetic phenomena underlying our technological society. It is a fundamental physical theory taught in engineering schools at university level. In this theory the electromagnetic field is a vector field permeating space. An important aspect relating to students difficulties and misconceptions is the difficulty in visualizing vector fields. With the goal of enhancing student understanding and studying student engagement we have developed high quality 3D visualizations of electromagnetic situations. These make use of accurate computation of the field lines, together with realistic rendering using the open source software Blender. We present examples of electrostatic situations with both an assessment of the student understanding and an evaluation of the students' perceptions of the importance of the visualizations. Complex interplay between visualization specific issues and the abstract notion of the field is identified in the students' conceptions. It is found that the visualizations are not used as substitutes of other learning resources. They are perceived as allowing a quick access to content and prompting motivation. The adequacy of the visualization to the subject content as well as the capacity to use it as self-assessment is valued by the students.