In a valuable TPT article, Sadler et al.1 show how a simple device consisting of a bead rolling in a water-filled clear circular segment of flexible tubing affixed to a wooden backing has been used by students to measure their horizontal accelerations in subway cars traveling between Harvard and MIT.
I hope the authors don't explain the operation of the accelerometer to beginning students in the same way they explain it to readers of The Physics Teacher. Their Fig. 2 shows a “force due to acceleration” acting on the bead. “Fictitious forces” may be fine for the initiate, but in my experience they serve only to confuse most beginning mechanics students.
Nevertheless, Arnold Arons2 suggests that the concept of “fictitious forces” might be appropriately introduced to students who have experienced being “pinned to their seats” by the “force due to acceleration” when, for example, riding the subway...