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[Phys-L] Aristotelian thinking among modern students



On Oct 20, 2005, at 12:28 PM, David T. Marx wrote:
I can understand students' misunderstanding with regard to velocity
being zero and acceleration not
being zero, but I am amazed that students would think that some
force other than gravity was acting
on the object to make it move upward, even after it left the hand
that threw it. It very much
reminded me of Aristotelian thinking. Any comments?

Actually this sounds like the classic Aristotelian F=mv belief that's
widely
described in the PER literature. E.g., the Hestenes FCI examines this
impetus idea. This is the way most of our students reason, AFTER
(yes, that
says AFTER) traditional instruction, and inspired a lot of PER, and
changed
teaching practices. Eric Mazur at Harvard tells a notable tale of this
happenstance.

Dan M

Dan MacIsaac, Associate Professor of Physics, SUNY-Buffalo State College
222SciBldg BSC, 1300 Elmwood Ave, Buffalo NY 14222 USA 716-878-3802
<macisadl@buffalostate.edu> <http://PhysicsEd.BuffaloState.edu>