An Investigation Of Students' Problem Solving Skills In An Introductory Physics Class
Year: 2010
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to document the specific errors that introductory physics students make in each phase of the solution of Force and Motion problems. A mixed methods design was used to identify those errors, and it was determined that the errors which students made the most frequently were the omission of mgcosθ , mgsinθ, and the lack of a clearly defined coordinate system as part of the free-body diagram. Additionally, there was a negative statistically significant relationship between the quality of the free-body diagram and the quality of equations that were produced to describe the object’s motion. The results indicate that students do not have a full understanding of the role of a free-body diagram or its relationship to the system of equations that are generated as a result of the application of Newton’s Second Law to the free-body diagram
Author: F. B. McDonald
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2763865129