Graphic representation of force in secondary education: analysis and alternative educational proposals

摘要

When secondary education students are forming their ideas of what will eventually become the concept of force, the images of arrows in our standard diagrams carry with them unconscious attributes of direction of movement and of belonging to the object they are attached to which distort the developing concept. We describe how we use a 'symbolic representation of interactions' with double-headed arrows which avoids these unwanted messages being conveyed, but does convey the reciprocity of interactions in mechanics, and easily slides over into the traditional representation when the students' concept of force has become more solid.