Refrigerator Magnet Investigation

Abstract

Refrigerator magnets belong to a group of simple devices that we use all the time but rarely question how they work. While refrigerator magnets have received considerable attention in physics education literature, the focus of these papers was mainly on the explanations of their structure or demonstrations of the structure of the magnetic layer. The goal of the present paper is to describe a set of activities that can be performed with general physics students to help them understand how refrigerator magnets are constructed and to simultaneously engage them in such science practices as creating and evaluating models, developing predictions based on hypotheses, performing experiments to evaluate the proposed hypothesis, and switching between different representations. This sequence of activities follows the logical progression of the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) approach. We piloted all materials with high school physics students, undergraduate physics majors, and graduate level physics education students, and revised based on student feedback. All courses where we implemented the activities were ISLE-based courses; therefore, the students were accustomed to working in groups devising explanations, devising experiments to test them, and sharing their ideas with the rest of the class. All activities that we propose require only the equipment that students commonly have at home (the most sophisticated is a smartphone with a magnetic field sensor). Therefore, the activities can also be used while teaching online. These activities took between 45 and 90 min for the students to complete. The students found them valuable and interesting.