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Re: Controversial Exam Questions - Not Ohm's Law



Mark Sylvester provided a nice quotation from IB Physics materials which
includes:

<quote>
Note: Different scientists and textbooks seem to use the term 'weight' in
different conceptual senses, i.e., the sense of gravitational force and that
of scale reading on weighing. The term weight seems not to be explicitly and
unambiguously defined in science. We must learn to live with this, and
deduce the meaning from the context.
<end quote>

The problem is that I cannot determine which weight definition is being used
in the exam question that sparked this thread. I see no contextual basis
for choosing one definition over the other. The only reason I personally
have the opinion that answer B is correct is my own bias for the definition
of weight. So the IB people say the right thing in their explanatory
material, but they don't follow their own advice when writing test questions
because they provide no "context" in this question to give the student a
clue as to which definition of weight is being used.


Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D. Phone/voice-mail: 419-358-3270
Professor of Chemistry & Physics FAX: 419-358-3323
Chairman, Science Department E-Mail edmiston@bluffton.edu
Bluffton College
280 West College Avenue
Bluffton, OH 45817
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