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While I understand the reasoning for your concern and avoidance of the
word "weight" it seems to me that you cannot ignor that the word exists
in our students vocabulary. If you are concerned with
connecting their inclass learning with the world they live in, you have
to find a way to connect their concept of weight with something that
they talk about in class.
Do you do that, and if so how?
cheers,
joe
On Fri, 8 Feb 2002, Laurent Hodges wrote:
> For many years (off and on - not continuously) I have taught introductory
> physics and I do it without using the term "weight" at all. (Or only in
> telling the students to ignore the term in their textbook, and use
> mg/gravitational force instead.) All my free-body diagrams include a
> gravitational force mg (g being due to everything in the universe), and
> that's what I call it. No W vector, so W is only work. When we discuss
> moving and/or accelerating elevators, we may talk about the upward normal
> force of the elevator floor on a person, but I don't call that "apparent
> weight" either.
>
> I can then ask the question, what is meant in ordinary English by the
> feeling of "weightlessness" in a spaceship orbiting the earth? No
> gravitational force? No! No normal force pushing on you? Yes.
>
> In mechanics we find it useful to clearly define "velocity" and "speed" in
> the physics sense, which may not coincide with the ordinary English uses of
> these terms. But I see no purpose in using the term "weight." It
> unnecessarily confuses students.
>
> Colleagues who teach with me in the same course accept this easily, but
> most of my colleagues use "weight" when teaching introductory physics.
>
> Can't we get rid of the term?
>
>
> Laurent Hodges, Professor of Physics
> 12 Physics Hall, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011-3160
> lhodges@iastate.edu http://www.public.iastate.edu/~lhodges
>
Joseph J. Bellina, Jr. 219-284-4662
Associate Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556