Free fall misconceptions: A comparison between science and non-science university majors
Eleanor Alma, D. Jugueta, Clark Kendrick, Johanna Mae, M. Indias · 2012
The study was conducted to find out the conceptual understanding and misconceptions of students in objects undergoing freely falling motion. Open-ended questions are utilized and are given to one science and three non-science classes to assess students’ understanding of the most basic concepts in free-fall. Results showed that majority of the students in both classes were able to correctly describe the motion of an object in free-fall in terms of velocity. Similar to previous studies, misconceptions were mostly on the acceleration of the object when it is at the highest point of its flight. Further analysis showed that there is no significant difference between the answers of science and non-science majors. Regardless of their concentration, students have the same general misconceptions on free fall. Science and nonscience majors equally share the 17% of the population who described the acceleration and velocity in the same manner. However, only 12% of the entire student population answered perfectly and contrary to expectation, only 4% of this are science majors.