Free fall misconceptions: results of a graph based pre test of sophomore civil engineering students

TL;DR

This study identified that sophomore civil engineering students can memorize free fall models but struggle to understand their physical significance and graph-based relationships, indicating misconceptions in physics and mathematics.

Contribution

It reveals specific misconceptions in students' understanding of free fall physics and graphs, and supports developing targeted tutorials to improve conceptual comprehension.

Findings

Students memorize free fall models but lack conceptual understanding.

Misconceptions exist in interpreting graphs of position, velocity, and acceleration.

Tutorials were developed to address these misconceptions.

Abstract

A partially unusual behaviour was found among 14 sophomore students of civil engineering who took a pre test for a free fall laboratory session, in the context of a general mechanics course. An analysis contemplating mathematics models and physics models consistency was made. In all cases, the students presented evidence favoring a correct free fall acceleration model, whilst their position component versus time, and velocity component versus time graphs revealed complex misconceptions both on the physical phenomenon and it's implicit mathematics consistency. The last suggests an inability to make satisfactory connections through definitions between graphed variables. In other words, evidence strongly suggests that students are perfectly able to memorize the free fall acceleration model, whilst not understanding it's significance at any level. This small study originated the develope and validation of a tutorial on free fall graphs for position, velocity and acceleration models, as part of a following cross universities major project.