Our classrooms are filled with engineering majors who take a semester‐long course in static equilibrium. Many students find this class too challenging and drop their engineering major. In our introductory physics class, we often breeze through static equilibrium; to physicists equilibrium is just a special case of Newton's second law. While it is difficult to find more time in the syllabus for any one topic, a hands‐on case study may help students to develop their physical intuition about static equilibrium and may help them to succeed in their subsequent classes. This article describes a hands‐on case study that you may wish to use in your classroom. (You may also wish to check a case study involving a boat published in this journal in the 1990s.1) The hands‐on case study presented here can be easily modified to work at the high school or introductory college level. There are three major components: I) planning, II) doing, and III) calculating.

1.
Donald M.
Drost
, “
Equilibrium—A case study
,”
Phys. Teach.
32
,
159
161
(
March 1994
).
2.
http://www‐materials.eng.cam.ac.uk/mpsite/short/OCR/ropes/default.html.
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