Re: sharing a test answer

["John M. Clement" <clement@HAL-PC.ORG>]

This is a common misconception.  Many students will say that there is no gravity on the moon, and/or the moon has air.  Generally these are misconceptions that are eventually expressed in class.  I always ask how astronauts can walk on the moon if there is no gravity, and what are the "funny" suits for?  They usually figure it out.

I had a student, on the first day, ask me how the water gets on the outside of a glass. "Does it go through the glass?".  After a bit of questioning, he was able to tell me that it came from the air, when the glass was cold.  He had never connected the various observations.  I know this was "covered" in previous courses.  This same student showed no gain on Lawson's Classroom test of Scientific Reasoning, but he showed some reasonable insight in class, and also was able to apply some physics ideas on the final exam.  He had actually made remarkable progress, but still tested out at 6th grade or lower reasoning level.  I think that "covering" material should be considered literally as "hiding" or "obscuring" it.

Misconceptions abound, but they all can learn!

> Too good to keep to myself: After stressing heavily in class that the
> significance of "the apple and the moon" is that the laws of nature are
> universal, one of my honors physics (for poets) students answered on the
> test thusly, "It is significant because Newton discovered that on the moon
> there is no gravity so the apple would not have fallen."
>
> Larry