The physics says the third skater is accelerating but the figure suggests she is being held in place. Based on the figure, it seems more likely that they are holding the skater in place, not causing her to accelerate. Both skaters are pushing with straight, locked arms. The third skater would experience a net force and, therefore, an acceleration. The figure shows a situation in which two ice-skaters are pushing on a third skater. The very first figure in the introduction to forces (5.3) presents some problems. Ideally, a textbook should re-enforce the idea that physics ideas can be applied to real scenarios.
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Instead, I would recommend that the authors provide learning objectives which would foreground student agency such as: identify the forces on an object in a real-world situation and use a free body diagram to represent those forces or describe each force as an interaction between two objects and identify the two objects involved in everyday force interactions etc…Īnother significant finding of PER is that students often think the physics they learn about in physics classes does not apply to real-world situations. I would suggest that a student would read these and interpret them as: memorize the definitions for kinematics and dynamics memorize the definition of force recognize something called a free-body diagram when someone shows it to you memorize the definition of the Newton and memorize that a force is a vector. For example, in chapter 5 the LO’s are: distinguish between kinematics and dynamics understand the definition of force identify simple free-body diagrams define the SI unit of force, the newton and describe force as a vector. That said, it is important that learners realize what they should be able to do with the ideas in the chapter. I really appreciate the authors effort to provide readers with learning objectives at the beginning of each chapter. I would encourage the authors to include more engaging elicitation questions and explicitly encourage students to take time to think about these questions before reading on. This text does raise some questions for students to think about but many of them are surface level or rhetorical questions: “What external forces act on him? Can we determine the origin of these forces?” These questions are unlikely to inspire deep thinking on the part of a student. Therefore, a textbook should encourage students to enter into an active internal dialogue about physics question and ideas. They must be actively involved in the learning process in order to increase their conceptual understanding of physics concepts. Perhaps the most significant finding of PER (physics education research) is that students do not learn physics passively. The three textbooks written by Etkina, Knight and Mazur all reflect a much more significant influence of PER. The book could be more responsive to research in physics education. This modularity is a significant advantage an open-source textbook. We are planning to adopt this text but create supplementary chapters to replace the current work and energy chapters (7 & 8). Mechanical energy happens to be constant for idealized problems that many physicists particularly fancy (pendula, Atwood’s machines, etc…) To mistake a quantity which is constant under certain circumstances for a conserved quantity undermines the awe-inspiring idea of conservation. Mechanical energy is merely constant for some systems under some conditions. Mechanical energy, like any other sub-category of energy, is not a conserved quantity. While this language is common in physics textbooks, I personally do not think that it is pedagogically useful. My most pressing concerns with the presentation of work and energy ideas in this textbook are the significant emphasis on “non-conservative” forces which do not conserve mechanical energy. In fact, the book includes significantly more topics than a reasonably paced course should cover. This textbook covers all of the topics which would typically be covered in a typical, year-long, introductory physics course. Reviewed by Lane Seeley, Professor, Seattle Pacific University on 4/30/21, updated 5/4/21 Journalism, Media Studies & Communications.This is not a stand alone textbook rather the intent is to help the student and any other interested person quickly familiarize themselves with concepts and terminology so as to use the appropriate equations to get the desired answers to physics problems. The overview of equations and definitions and eventually sample problem solutions are pertinent to an introductory, college-level physics course suitable for pre-meds. Some ideas from calculus are included in the book but are not necessary to understand the content. This guide is meant as a supplement to a year long freshman level physics course with a trigonometry prerequisite. Physics Study Guide is a free online physics book from Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection.