CENCO® AP Physics Lab 2.06: Mapping Electric Fields

Create maps of equipotential lines and the electric fields that exist between two charged surfaces.

Introducing the new CENCO AP Physics lab series!

Ideal for AP Physics 1 and 2, AP Physics C, IB DP Physics, and advanced/honors physics courses, each of the 35 experiments is aligned with the revised College Board AP curriculum. These innovative labs go way beyond traditional exercises, turning real-world scenarios into true guided-inquiry investigations. Students are given a goal, but the investigation is driven by their ideas. As they draw conclusions, students report their results using the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning model. The teacher guides and student manuals are authored and reviewed by AP Physics teachers with decades of combined experience, so you can trust the setups to be successful in your classroom. All labs come complete with instructions and materials for one lab group of 2 to 4 students. For your convenience, labs are packaged to allow you to purchase only what is required for each experiment.

In this take on the traditional electric field mapping experiment, students can measure the strength of the electric field directly modifying a common digital multimeter. Students explore the field for various shapes and arrangements of conductors, then report their findings using the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning method. This lab also has the major advantage of using a dry field-mapping apparatus; no water needed.