This paper reports on a study to determine whether blind students' conceptualizations of force and motion differ from sighted students. This is particularly concerned with the question of whether the students' visual experiences have any relation to their conceptualizations or misconceptualization about force and motion. The research was designed…

Forces are experienced in actions on objects. The mechanoreceptor system is stimulated by proximal forces in interactions with objects, and experiences of force occur in a context of information yielded by other sensory modalities, principally vision. These experiences are registered and stored as episodic traces in the brain. These stored…

This study examined the relationships among visuospatial ability, motivation to learn science, and learner conceptions of force across commonly measured demographics with university undergraduates with the aim of examining the support for an evolved sense of force and motion. Demographic variables of interest included age, ethnicity, and gender,…

This is a discussion of the conservation of angular momentum of the human body engaged in somersaults and twists. The principle is also applied to a cat turning over in midair. The events occur in the absence of torques. Application of the maneuvers are suggested for astronauts. (SA)

Discusses how an individual's visual system processes cues to motion in depth. A theoretical model of the operations of the visual system that underlie the perception of motion in depth is included. (HM)

Describes inexpensive method of determining harmonic content of a repetitive signal such as a sound wave and demonstrations of the precession of a bicycle wheel and inversion shadows on the retina. Also describes a resonance demonstrator (made from scrap material) driven by a portable jigsaw. (JN)

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…