Re: [Phys-L] inertia and the tablecloth demo

[Richard Tarara <rtarara@saintmarys.edu>]

Actually I have always been baffled by the fact that many students DO 
NOT seem to know what you mean by push/pull or even up/down.  In 
exercises to identify the 3rd law force pairs various situations, one 
(too) often gets a mish-mash of pushes for pulls, pulls for pushes, and 
often in the wrong directions. :-(

BTW:  I do not mean to support the use of 'inertia' other than to 
recognize that the term will be present in many sources that student's 
may encounter and that perhaps it is best to identify the term as an 
historical artifact (we have many others) and then move on.

rwt
> On 08/18/2016 04:58 PM, Derek McKenzie wrote:

> The pedagogical issue with this, however, is that whereas everybody
> knows what you mean by "push/pull", almost no student will know what
> you mean by "inertia". This places you in the somewhat ridiculous
> position of having to explain what the synonym of a thing means when
> you could just as easily explain the thing itself!


--
Richard Tarara
Professor Emeritus
Saint Mary's College

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http://sites.saintmarys.edu/~rtarara/software.html