Many people erroneously believe that an object carried by another moving object will, if dropped, fall in a straight vertical line. This belief may stem from a perceptual illusion in which objects dropped from a moving carrier are perceived as falling straight down or even backward. (Author/RD)

Although Newton's laws of motion are well known, studies have shown that many people have misconceptions about the motions of objects. Subjects of these studies tend to follow a theory held in the three centuries before Newton (impetus theory). This theory and studies examining misconceptions about motion are discussed. (JN)

Several recent studies in which subjects solved pencil/paper problems concerning the behavior of moving objects have shown that many people have incorrect beliefs about motion. The present study considered the question of whether these naive beliefs are manifested in situations where people observe and interact with moving objects. Several…

Everyday life provides individuals with countless opportunities for observing and interacting with objects in motion. Although everyone presumably has some sort of knowledge about motion, it is by no means clear what form(s) this knowledge may take. The research described in this paper determined what sorts of knowledge are in fact acquired…

Through everyday experience people acquire knowledge about how moving objects behave. For example, if a rock is thrown up into the air, it will fall back to earth. Research has shown that people's ideas about why moving objects behave as they do are often quite inconsistent with the principles of classical mechanics. In fact, many people hold a…

Two experiments were conducted to characterize the system of beliefs that make up the naive impetus theory of motion and to determine what effects physics instruction has on students' conceptions of motion. Thirteen college students were asked to solve several quantitative problems and were interviewed about their answers in the first experiment.…