An Investigation into the Understanding of the Force Concept of the Lower Secondary School Students

Abstract

In order to know the extent of the understandings of the basic concepts of the mechanic which had been taught in the lower secondary schools in Japan, the author investigated into the students from 7th to 9th grades who had already learned the mechanics, by asking them to answer the questionnaires that were consisted of very fundamental problems concerning the force. The investigation revealed the following much important information useful for the science teachers to construct the teaching plan and the teaching strategy about the topic. (1) Over 90% of the students had understood how to express the force by the vector's arrow, but they could not solve the problems presented in some complicated situations. (2) Only half of them in each grade had understood the concept of the ballance of two forces. (3) The number of the students who could find a resultant force of two forces and resolve one force into two components using the parallerogram method, was very small, in the 9th grade students it was about 20% and in the 7th grade zero. (4) The number of the students who could obtain the resultant force of two forces which act on the same line, was also very small, in the 9th grade students it was about 30%, in the 7th grade about 10%. (5) The point of application of the force had not been well unberstood, especially in the case of the gravity and the reaction of a force. (6) The number of the students who had understood fully the concept of action and reaction of the force, was only 20~25% in each grade.