Introduction
Newtonian physics, and why is it important
Newtonian physics, or classical mechanics, is the description of how forces act on matter using the laws of motion and gravitation. It covers the most fundamental concepts in physics, and becomes an essential tool for more complicated problems, such as analyzing the motion of a charged particle in an electric field. Considering physics’ highly hierarchical nature, a lack of solid understanding of Newtonian physics could lead to difficulties in later studies, causing a snowball effect.
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Understanding it, however, is hard
Researches on high school or early college students show a common lack of thorough understanding of Newtonian physics (diSessa, 1993; White, 1983). According to White (1983), “high school students have trouble solving even very simple force and motion problems” (p.43), such as determining how the force would affect the object’s speed of motion.
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Tracing to the sources of difficulty​
1. Faulty beliefs derived from real life experiences. Many find Newton’s first law of motion -- “An object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force” -- obscure, because they have never seen an object with no force acting upon it. Most objects in our daily lives are affected by unseen forces such as gravity and friction, so objects “fall down” or “stop” instead of “remain at rest” or “continue to move” (White, 1983). Such naive beliefs, if not replaced by more advanced ones, would linger in students’ minds along with other knowledge components and cause confusion.
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2. Unfamiliarity with vector representation and vector arithmetic. A most common challenge is representing force and velocity as vectors. Many students fail to do so and think about force and motion problems in terms of speed and direction (White, 1983). Since they have to keep track of two factors instead of one, they tend to get lost, overloaded or make mistakes. Students are also new to vector arithmetic. Although they are familiar with the properties of scalar arithmetic, when solving force and motion problems, some of the knowledge do not transfer to, or may even conflict with vector arithmetic (White, 1983). Thus, getting students familiar with the powerful “mental tool” of vectors, and comfortable to use it, is a most important task for teaching Newtonian physics.
​My approach
These two sources of difficulty inspired me to develop a game to make learning physics easier.
My game is a simulated world where players can directly experience the concepts of Newtonian physics. Forces that are unseen in the real world, such as gravity and friction, are visualized in the game. Through playing with the forces, players can better understand physical phenomena and replace the faulty beliefs.
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As for students’ difficulty in learning vectors, my game embodies vector concepts in players’ gestures. In my game, players manipulate force vectors by touching and dragging on the screen. Through the interaction, players can align the vector’s magnitude and direction with their finger movements, and better understand what a vector means. My game also embodies vector addition when players add a new force to the previous force.
Supporting theories
1. Teaching with embodied cognition / multisensory.
“Thinking is grounded in the sensorimotor system” (Glenberg et al., 2013, p.576), cognition is affected by how people move their bodies. Gestures might help organise ideas, chunk mental representations to reduce cognitive load, and increase schema construction (Ping and Goldin-Meadow, 2010; Hu et al., 2015).
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Similarly, the multisensory technique suggests that the more sensory modalities are activated, the more learning would be enhanced by the increased working memory channels (Alibali & DiRusso, 1999; Hu et al., 2015). Such technique has long been in use for educational purposes. For example, Montessori schools use “Sandpaper Letters” to teach students to recognise letters. The procedure provides stimuli from visual, auditory and haptic channels simultaneously.
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2. Filling the gap of qualitative experiences.
It has been common that students memorize formulae without understanding the broader principles (Forbus, 1997), whereas physics is believed to be best taught through activities that help students understand physical phenomena conceptually (Squire, 2004; Forbus, 1997). As Forbus (1997) argues, “students should deeply understand the qualitative principles that govern a domain—including the mechanisms, such as physical processes, and the causal relationships—before they are immersed in quantitative problems”. The fact is, even though some textbooks do introduce ideas in qualitative terms and some physics classes do provide labs and experiments, more qualitative-level, hands-on, and engaging experiences are in great need for students to reinforce and transfer the knowledge into their own understandings.
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To conclude, a mobile / tablet game would be a wonderful match for teaching Newtonian physics. First, games can create a formulae-less, qualitative, and highly engaging experience to supplement formal learning. Second, the abundant touches and movements during a game makes it a great media for embodied learning. Finally, Newtonian physics’ geometry-heavy (Freudenthal, 1993) and highly interactive nature goes well with games’ characteristics. This is where my thesis game “Use the Force” starts.
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References
Agostinho, S., Tindall-Ford, S., Ginns, P., Howard, S. J., Leahy, W., & Paas, F. (2015). Giving learning a helping hand: finger tracing of temperature graphs on an iPad. Educational Psychology Review, 27(3), 427-443.
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Alibali, M. W., & DiRusso, A. A. (1999). The function of gesture in learning to count: more than keeping track. Cognitive Development, 14, 37-56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0885-2014(99)80017-3.
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Freudenthal, H. (1993). Thoughts on Teaching Mechanics, Didactical Phenomenology of the Concept of Force, Educational Studies in Mathematics, 25, 71– 87.
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Glenberg, A. M., Witt, J. K., & Metcalfe, J. (2013). From the Revolution to Embodiment: 25 years of cognitive psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 573-585. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1745691613498098.
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Hu, F. T., Ginns, P., & Bobis, J. (2015). Getting the point: Tracing worked examples enhances learning. Learning and Instruction, 35, 85-93.