Force
Forces and Motion

Representing a relationship helpfully

Teaching Guidance for 11-14 Supporting Physics Teaching

Choosing and representing

Teacher Tip: There's a very important connection between mass, force and acceleration: I choose the mass and the force. The acceleration is a result of these choices. Remind yourself of that by writing: forcemass = acceleration each time.

Teacher Tip: To be even more precise, in this relationship there is one thing which is shown by just a number (mass is a scalar), and two things are shown by a representation where direction is important (force and acceleration), so we use ordered sets of numbers for this pair. Now you'd remind yourself of that by writing: a = Fm.

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