It is well known that the concepts of electric field and electrostatic potential present difficulties to many students. In this work, by adopting the strategy of teaching with analogies and spread sheets, we propose a way to help high-school students to visualize and conceptually understand how the electrostatic potential is distributed in space due to a given boundary condition. The methodology can be easily adopted in schools. The examples that we show were developed by high school students from the public system of Rio de Janeiro through the Jovens Talentos da Ciência program from FAPERJ. This methodology could also be applied to the teaching of other topics, such as heat conduction.
electrostatics; analogy; electric potential
