Undergraduate students` misconceptions about force and motion in Afyon Kocatepe University

ABSTRACTM.ScUNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS? MISCONCEPTIONSABOUT FORCE AND MOTIONIN AFYON KOCATEPE UNIVERSITYNejla SONERAfyon Kocatepe UniversityGraduate School of Natural and Applied SciencesDepartment of PhysicsSupervisor:Assist. Prof. Dilek KARAGÖZThe main purpose of this study was to reveal the effects of independent variables (gender,faculty and type of score) on the undergraduate students? misconceptions about force andmotion which form the basis of mechanic. The study was conducted with students fromdifferent faculties and departments (department of elementary teaching, physics, chemistry,mathematics, mining engineering, geodesy and photogrammetry engineering, ceramicsengineering) in academic year of 2005-2006. The first survey, ?Force and Motion SuccessTest? which contained 30 questions, was conducted with 519 students to investigate theirmisconceptions about force and motion in the second week of the academic year of 2005-2006. The second survey that contains five open ended questions parallel to the first surveywas conducted with randomly chosen 47 students in the third week of the academic year2005-2006. Moreover, in order to discover the differences, the same survey was conductedwith 47 students in thirteenth week, after force and motion topics had been covered. Somemisconceptions of the students have been detected with surveys and they have beeninterpreted by the researcher. The data formed by SPSS 10 (Statistical Packages for the SocialSciences, version 10) is used to evaluate the results of the surveys.Statistical results have shown that the independent variables such as gender, faculty,department and the type of score of the students were related to their misconceptions aboutforce and motion.When the data have been analyzed with respect to gender, the percentage of right answers ofthe male students was 31, 3 % and this was more than that of female students, 22, 6 %.The percentage of right answers of students who come with numerical score type is 29, 8 %which is more than the ones who come with both numerical score type andverbal score type.When the same data have been analyzed with respect to faculty variable, faculty of sciencewas the best of right answers among the facultie studied, with 31, 4 %. The percentage ofright answers is 29% in engineering faculty and 20, 9% in faculty of education. The highestpercentage of right answers belongs to department of mathematics with 33, 2% anddepartment of elementary teaching has the lowest percentage of right answers with 20, 9%.Finally, it was observed that the data obtained from this study is compatible with manymisconceptions found in a number of studies conducted in different places and time.2006, 134 pagesKeywords: Misconceptions, Physics Education, Force and Motion, Newton Laws.