Students making sense of motion in a vertical roller coaster loop

Pendrill, Ann-Marie; Eriksson, Moa; Eriksson, Urban; Svensson, Kim; Ouattara, Lassana

doi:10.1088/1361-6552/ab3f18

Cited by 17 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 22 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Newton's second law is present in the student discussions only as a very general principle. In the group discussion presented in [19], the students seemed surprised to discover that the geometrical vector sum of forces, e.g. at the turning point of a pendulum, gave directly the vector ma.…”

Section: Affordances Of Free-body Diagramsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Round and round in circles—shifting relevance structures as students discuss acceleration and forces during circular motion in a vertical plane

Pendrill¹,

Eriksson

et al. 2023

Eur. J. Phys.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Working out the relations between the forces involved in circular motion in a vertical plane can be challenging for first-year students, as illustrated in this analysis of a 30 minute group discussion of a textbook problem where a remote-control model car moves with constant speed inside a cylinder. The analysis includes timelines of semiotic resources used, as well as of topics brought up by individual students.Questions from the students include: What is that force you drew on the paper? Does it act on the car or on the wall? What keeps the car from falling down? The normal force and the “centripetal force” both point to the center – does it mean they are the same? Is it only a gravitational force at the top? Does the normal force at the bottom just cancel gravity or does it need to be larger? What is “normal” about the normal force? Arriving at the correct numerical result is insufficient evidence for student understanding of forces in circular motion!Can students with fragmentary understanding bring their pieces together to solve the puzzle? From the timelines, we can identify a few critical moments where the discussion changes focus. This happens when one of the students in the group introduces a new dimension of variation, e.g. a reminder about the force of gravity, a freebody diagram drawn, as well as diagrams drawn in other parts of the circle thanthe top or bottom, where the centripetal and normal forces are no longer in the same direction. Embodied experiences are invoked, but only at a very late stage in the discussion. For teachers, an awareness of the different ways students use terms and think about the forces can be a guide to offering a larger variation in the interventions, as well as in problems assigned.

show abstract

Section: Affordances Of Free-body Diagramsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Round and round in circles—shifting relevance structures as students discuss acceleration and forces during circular motion in a vertical plane

Pendrill¹,

Eriksson

et al. 2023

Eur. J. Phys.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…2. Jerk in amusement rides [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]14]; 3. Jerk in cosmology and space technology [91][92][93][94]; 4.…”

Section: Categorisation Of Jerk Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(2019) [6] Physics Education Q3 Assessed the first-year university understanding of the vertical motion on a roller coaster loop. It was found that students have partial conceptions about force and motion and contradictions in their responses and do not have a good understanding of abrupt changes in jerk.…”

Section: Source Sjr Purpose and Findings Commentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Jerk-the time derivative of acceleration-is an important consideration for many applications in science and engineering. For example, jerk has long been used as a design factor to ensure ride comfort, e.g., in amusement rides [1][2][3][4][5][6][7], ships [8][9][10], lifts/elevators [11] and buses [12], and there are many reasons to believe that the relevance of jerk-and higher derivatives of displacement-will increase. A number of ISO standards also refer to jerk [13][14][15][16][17][18][19].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Jerk and higher derivatives of acceleration are relevant for understanding the impact of motion and vibrations in a wide range of applications, as reviewed in this paper [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] The considerable interest is also reflected in the large number of downloads (>100,000) of a 2016 paper on jerk and higher derivatives [1].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Jerk within the Context of Science and Engineering—A Systematic Review

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Rapid changes in forces and the resulting changes in acceleration, jerk and higher order derivatives can have undesired consequences beyond the effect of the forces themselves. Jerk can cause injuries in humans and racing animals and induce fatigue cracks in metals and other materials, which may ultimately lead to structure failures. This is a reason that it is used within standards for limits states. Examples of standards which use jerk include amusement rides and lifts. Despite its use in standards and many science and engineering applications, jerk is rarely discussed in university science and engineering textbooks and it remains a relatively unfamiliar concept even in engineering. This paper presents a literature review of the jerk and higher derivatives of displacement, from terminology and historical background to standards, measurements and current applications.

show abstract

Digital Twins in Education

Okita

2024

Encyclopedia of Educational Innovation

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Students making sense of motion in a vertical roller coaster loop

Cited by 17 publications

References 22 publications

Round and round in circles—shifting relevance structures as students discuss acceleration and forces during circular motion in a vertical plane

Round and round in circles—shifting relevance structures as students discuss acceleration and forces during circular motion in a vertical plane

Jerk within the Context of Science and Engineering—A Systematic Review

Digital Twins in Education

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About