Physics problems which necessiates counter-intuitive and the effect of experiments on student success and attitude

This research was conducted to examine the effect of using counter-intuitive physics problems and experiments, which require counterintuitive thinking on students success and attitudes of students in physics lessons which are tought at high school level. This research has an experimental study design of pre-test-post-test model with the control group.This study place at a private high school in Ankara . The study period was five weeks and a total of 60 students participated in the study one experiment group and two control groups. Via the coincidental stereotype method, one class was determined as the experiment group while 2 other classes of 11 th grade were determined as the control groups.In the research, two different teaching methods were composed. These are (1) the counter intuitive physics problems and experiments along with teaching and (2) the traditional teaching method. In the study, firstly, an achivement test related to the subject of flows of electricity and questions which require counterintuitive thinking was developed. After that, experiments and the scale of attitude, prepared by Taşlıdere (2002) was adapted to the topic of electric. In the process of designing the achievement test, the national high school curriculum and the testbooks taught were taken into consideration.The achievement test was administered to fifty students studying in PSC and having learned the subject as a model study in the spring semester of 2009-2010 teaching year. Necessary corrections are done according to ideas of there advisors before starting on the experimental study, reliability of the test is 0.80. Experimental and control groups are compared according to the data obtained from the last test. It is seen that the lessons along with counter-intuitive physics problems and experiments draw more student attention and effective in improving success of students and developing positive attitudes.