Inductively Modeling Parallel, Normal, and Frictional Forces

摘要

This year, instead of resolving the weight mg of an object resting on an incline into force components parallel and perpendicular to the surface of the incline, I asked my students to actually measure these forces at various angles of inclination and graph the data. I wanted my students to inductively discover mg sinθ and mg cosθ, and to use these graphs to confront the passive nature of the static frictional force. I believe the graphs themselves are very powerful conceptual tools that are often never discovered and used by students who only learn to use equations at specific angles to solve specific quantitative problems.