Lillian McDermott's tutorial book gets into this pretty good. I sat
through a practice session conducted with several graduate students and
faculty...and a good number of us made careless errors that made it obvious
how we can easily distract our students' logic. For example, I carelessly
called the force of the upper book on the lower book the weight of the
upper book. Clearly, after a little/lot of thinking, I realized that while
there was a force which had that value, the force exerted on the lower book
was *not* the weight of the upper book. These symantic differences (to
instructors) become major logic impasses to students. Karl
Dr. Karl I. Trappe Desk Phone: (512) 471-4152
Physics Dept, Mail Stop C-1600 Demo Office: (512) 471-5411
The University of Texas at Austin Home Phone: (512) 264-1616
Austin, Texas 78712-1081