Confronting students' alternative conceptions in mechanics with the force and motion microworld

This article describes the development of a suite of four computer simulation programs, collectively called the Force and Motion Microworld (FMM), that was designed to confront some high school students' alternative conceptions in mechanics. The first program, Motion Graphs, aims at facilitating students' understanding of velocity-time graphs as representations of motion. The other programs, Spaceship, Model Car, and Skydiver, provide three different contexts in which the effects of force on motion can be explored. Student's work in pairs or small groups on the programs carrying out predict-observe-explain (POE) tasks from a set of worksheets. The POE tasks provide discrepant events that contradict students' alternative conceptions. FMM was originally used as a tool for a classroom study into the process of students' conceptual change. The findings show that FMM may also be offered as a supplement or alternative to other instructional tools for facilitating students' understanding in force and motion. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.