New Ways of Investigating the Canonical Coin Toss Acceleration Problem

Asking students about the acceleration of a tossed object is a well-studied problem in physics education research. Students frequently respond using reasoning that describes the velocity of the object, in particular that acceleration is zero at the top. We created new versions of the canonical multiple-choice Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation coin-toss questions to investigate what other reasoning students might use. Some students were asked "is the acceleration zero at the top?" Other students were told "the acceleration is not zero" and asked to explain. A third group answered the original multiple-choice version of the question. Our results suggest that some students give answers that they can explain are incorrect. We also find that some students' responses about the acceleration at the turnaround point are affected by question format.