Physics For Scientists and Engineers A Strategic Approach With Modern Physics 4th Edition Knight Solutions Manual
Physics For Scientists and Engineers A Strategic Approach With Modern Physics 4th Edition Knight Solutions Manual
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CHAPTER
2
Kinematics in One Dimension
Of all the intellectual hurdles which the human mind has confronted and has overcome in
the last fifteen hundred years, the one which seems to me to have been the most amazing in
character and the most stupendous in the scope of its consequences is the one relating to
the problem of motion.
Background Information
Chapter 2 is a large and difficult chapter. Although to physicists the chapter says nothing more than
v = dx/dt and a = dv/dt, these are symbolic expressions for difficult, abstract concepts. Student ideas
about force and motion are largely non-Newtonian, and they cannot begin to grasp Newton’s laws
without first coming to a better conceptual understanding of motion.
As Butterfield notes in the above quote, the “problem of motion” was an immense
intellectual hurdle. Galileo was perhaps the first to understand what it means to quantify
observations about nature and to apply mathematical analysis to those observations. He was also
the first to recognize the need to separate the how of motion—kinematics—from the why of
motion—dynamics. These are very difficult ideas, and we should not be surprised that kinematics
is also an immense intellectual hurdle for students.
Student difficulties with kinematics have been well researched (Trowbridge and
McDermott, 1980 and 1981; Rosenquist and McDermott, 1987; McDermott et al., 1987, Thornton
and Sokoloff, 1990). Arons (1990) gives an excellent summary and makes many useful suggestions
for teaching kinematics. Student difficulties can be placed in several categories.
Difficulties with concepts: Students have a rather undifferentiated view of motion, without
clear distinctions between position, velocity, and acceleration. Chapter 1 will have given them a
start at making these distinctions, but they’ll need additional practice.
2-1
A much more difficult problem for most students, and one that takes more practice, is
changing from one type of graph to another. For example, students might be given the x-versus-t
graph shown below on the left and asked to draw the corresponding vx-versus-t graph. When first
presented with such a problem, almost no students can generate the correct velocity graph shown
on the right. Many feel that a “conservation of shape” law applies and redraw the position graph—
perhaps translated up or down—as a velocity graph. They need a careful explanation, through
several examples, of how the slope of the position graph becomes the value of the velocity graph at
the same t. Changing from a velocity graph back to a position graph is even more difficult.
Dear Sir: Will you please advise the Committee on Finance whether or not there
are any papers or charges on file reflecting against the official or moral character of
——, late collector of internal revenue for the first district of ——, suspended?
If there are any such papers or charges will you please communicate their nature
and character to the committee?
Respectfully, yours,
D. MANNING, Secretary.