Thinking about actions to take: Gravity and Space

There's a good chance you could improve your teaching if you were to:

Try these

• separating the pull of gravity acting on an object from any compression or tension forces supporting the object
• exploring situations where gravity still pulls, but there is no atmosphere
• modelling the action of the pull of gravity as a force
• drawing forces precisely

Teacher Tip: Work through the Physics Narrative to find these lines of thinking worked out and then look in the Teaching Approaches for some examples of activities.

Avoid these

• conflating mass and weight
• restricting drawing the pull of gravity on objects to situations where these objects are falling
• being casual with the term weightless
• stating that a force is zero, when it's only very small

Teacher Tip: These difficulties are distilled from: the research findings; the practice of well-connected teachers with expertise; issues intrinsic to representing the physics well.