Understanding floating: A study of children aged between six and eight years

Exploring Student Difficulties with Buoyancy

“…Only one [2] of the studies [2,7,8] identifying conceptions associated with F b ~ depth -1 involved college students, so perhaps students "grow out" of this conclusion. Further study of why students choose Bottom C but not Displaced A or Tether D+G is needed.…”

“…This conclusion may be made directly (F b mass) [7,18], or by equating buoyant force and weight regardless of whether objects sink or float (weight) [2,8]. Other students may base this conclusion explicitly on a mass dependence of the volume of fluid displaced (VFD) on the object's mass (V mass) [3,6,[9][10][11][12]17] or density (density) [11][12]17].…”

“…A common error by students is associating equilibrium position with applied force (position) [2,8]. Thus a block at equilibrium placed deeper in the water must be experiencing a smaller buoyant force than an identical block placed less deeply.…”

“…We interviewed eight students at the end of the fall, 2010 semester, and we have analyzed longanswer explanations given by students taking drafts of our assessment. Distractors for our questions are based on conceptions identified by these methods, and by other studies [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. Since few of those studies [1][2][3][4][5] involve students above the age of 15, 1 we wondered which difficulties identified in those studies would persist into college.…”

Flutuação dos corpos: elementos para a discussão sobre sua aprendizagem em alunos dos anos iniciais do Ensino Fundamental

“…Resultados de alguns destes trabalhos revelam que as crianças tendem a associar o fato de um objeto afundar ou flutuar a aspectos como sua massa ou formato [11], ao material do qualé feito [12], conforme também revelam Martinelli e cols. [5], exemplificado nas explicações dos estudantes, como: "[...] a bola afunda porqueé pesada e porque tem muito peso; [ barco flutua porqueé feito de madeira e motor, porque o motor tem força demais; [...] o algodão flutuou porque eleé feito de espuma".…”