Algorithms, Visualization, and Mental Models: High School Students' Interactions with a Relative Motion Simulation

摘要

Galileo' s contemporaries as well as today' s students have difficulty understanding relative motion. We hypothesize that the construction of visual models, resolution of these visual models with numeric models, and, in many cases, rejection of commitments such as the belief in one "true" velocity, are necessary for students to form integrated mental models of relative motion events. To investigate students' relative motion problem solving, high school science students were videotaped in classroom and laboratory settings as they performed collabora- tive predict-observe-explain activities with relative motion computer simulations.