Students' Models of Newton's Second Law in Mechanics and Electromagnetism

Abstract

We investigated students' use of Newton's second law in mechanics and electromagnetism contexts by interviewing students in a two-semester calculus-based physics course. We observed that students' responses are consistent with three mental models. These models appeard in mechanics contexts and were transferred to electromagnetism contexts. We developed an inventory to help instructors identify these models and direct students towards the correct one.

15 pages, 3 figues and 4 tables

References in corpus (1)

• Model Analysis: Assessing the dynamics of student learning

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Using the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism to investigate progression in student understanding from introductory to advanced levels
• Instructor Framing and Incentives Shape Physics Students' Engagement and Learning Gains from an Inquiry-Based Electrostatics Tutorial on the Method of Images