Front Matter

A large number of people contributed to the production of these lessons. The bridging analogies strategy was proposed by J. Clement. The relative motion lessons were initially designed by C. Camp. A prototype of the book-on-the-table lesson (in unit I) and elements of the inertia lessons were designed by J. Minstrell. Pilot tutoring sessions to evaluate lesson strategies were conducted by D. Brown. Other lessons were authored by a team of researchers and teachers consisting of C. Camp, J. Clement, K. Schultz, D. Brown, K. Gonzales, J. Kudukey, J. Minstrell, M. Steinberg, and V. Veneman. Classroom trials of the lessons were conducted by C. Camp, V. Veneman, and J. Kudukey. Classroom observations were made by D. Brown, J. Clement, K. Gonzales, K. Schultz, and M. Steinberg. Evaluations of lessons were conducted by D. Brown, K. Gonzales, and J. Clement. Tapes of the lesson trials were reviewed by the entire authoring team leading to implementation of revisions. At least three trial years and two revision cycles were conducted for each lesson. Lessons were typed by D. Freeman, D. Forrester, and D. Litterer, and drawings incorporated by D. Cain, T. Hayword, J. Monaghan, B. Young, and A. Zietsman.

Second edition changes were primarily based on the teaching experience of Charles Camp, John Kudukey, and Valerie Veneman. Second edition editing was done with the assistance of Lynn Stephens, Kristen Forrelli, Megan Graham, Stanford Chiu, and Elyse Horowitz.

Project Director:

John Clement

Content Reviewers:

Timothy Barclay

Technical Education Resource Center

Robert Bauman

Physics Department, University of Alabama

Kenneth Langley

Physics Department, University of Massachusetts

Arthur Murdock

The Sutton School

Preparation of this document was supported by National Science Foundation Grants #MDR-8470579, MDR-8751398, MDR-9149788, and REC-0231808. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

School of Education and Scientific Reasoning Research Institute University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003

Changes in the second edition have been primarily based on the teaching experiences of Charles Camp, John Kudukey, and Valerie Veneman. Suggestions from other teachers and more strategies from recent teaching materials have also influenced this edition.

In this edition we have chosen to emphasize the nature of the friction, tension, and gravity concepts as forces by using the terms friction force, tension force, and gravitational force throughout the book. This change was also influenced by our concern about the need to help students distinguish between the concepts of force and inertia. The inertia units have been reduced in length while retaining the most effective parts of these units.

Other changes have included switching the order of units 6 and 7. While we feel there was a significant advantage to the early arrangement of revisiting the gravitational force concept in a spiral fashion, we also think that many teachers will be more comfortable with the sequence in this edition. Certainly both sequences for chapters 6 and 7 are possible as indicated by the suggested teaching sequence diagram in the Introduction.

Many smaller adjustments have been made to give teachers advice about the importance of carefully introducing demonstrations at the proper time and drawing out vital points during critical discussions. The use of voting during each lesson has been examined and carefully adjusted. All units have been revised for clarity, and more alternative strategies and references to updated external resources have been offered in a number of places.

We hope that these materials will continue to challenge student thinking in a cheerful and positive way in order to help them make sense of these fundamental physics concepts.

Charles Camp and John Clement

June 2010