Newton's Second Law
Forces and Motion
Thinking about actions to take: Non-Zero Force Changes Speed
Teaching Guidance
for 11-14
There's a good chance you could improve your teaching if you were to:
Try these
- working mostly with contact forces
- emphasising the connection between resultant force and changing motion
- focusing on the forces acting on a single object before trying to predict its motion
- using only the resultant force to predict the motion
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
- suggesting that force is the kind of thing that might run out
- discussing multiple objects at once
- speaking as if component forces are trying to make the object do something
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.