Magnetics High School Project in Lebanon
Helping Students Connect: Magnetics High School Project in Lebanon
With the aim of developing an educational experience for high school students in Lebanon in order to familiarize them with the basics of magnetism and major applications of magnetics, our joint AP/MTT/MAG chapter received a generous $2,000 grant from the IEEE Magnetics Society. Materials for lab experiments were purchased and a manual was written in the framework of a final-year-project at City University in Tripoli, Lebanon. The experiments, so defined, were tested during a demonstration at Iman High School, also in Tripoli, to a class of grade 11 students. The next step in the project was to allow students to do these experiments themselves in a lab. Arrangements were made with St Mary’s Orthodox College in Beirut, Lebanon to conduct such lab experiments in 2019. But then severe economic troubles hit Lebanon, aggravated the year after by Covid-19 restrictions and plans were postponed till the first half of 2022.
With the help of three student volunteers, we conducted lab sessions for grade 11 and 12 students from February through June of 2022. The head of the school physics department indicated which of the nine experiments available, would fit in with the curriculum during a certain class session. I kickstarted these sessions with an introduction to the IEEE, the Magnetics Society, and some foundations of magnetism. Students tested forces between pieces of different materials, like a metal, hard magnetic material, and soft magnetic material. Furthermore, they saw the response of a compass needle to an electric current and induced a voltage by inserting a magnet rapidly into a coil. They also felt the lifting force of an electromagnet, and a simple model revealed to them the concept of an electric motor.
Teachers at St Mary’s, the student volunteers, and I enjoyed the clear enthusiasm of the students. In a feedback report the volunteers remarked:
- In the first experiment, students actually enjoyed testing the different magnets. They seemed intrigued by the lines of the magnetic field in the third part. The students visualized the attraction and repulsion forces much more clearly while using the transparent smooth sheet and the iron powder than while using the magnetic sheet.
The head of the Physics department commented:
- Throughout the experiments, junior and senior learners were actively engaged in posing questions, investigating, experimenting and reflecting on learning which is an integral component of the learning process. It helped learners notice the connections between one context and another, between theory and the experience.
The pilot magnetism lab reached around 70 students of grade 11 (four Life Science sections and one General Science section) and 65 students of grade 12 (two Life Science sections and one General Science section). In the future we plan to improve the set of experiments, recruit more university students as volunteers, and find more high schools to participate. Moreover, we would like to generate videos permitting students to preview or review experiments.
Acknowledgment
The author acknowledges the grant awarded by the IEEE Magnetics Society, Dean Walid Kamali of City University and Ahmad Trad for writing the manual. The author would also like to thank American University of Beirut student volunteers Sabine Farhat, Sara Khalifeh, and Mohamad Abadi, and head of the Physics Department at St Mary’s Orthodox College, Rima Timani for their tireless work and engagement.