Free fall is discussed in the Projectile Motion unit in the Manitoba Grade 12 Physics Curriculum.\u00a0 Rane (2015) states,”researchers have proved that free fall misconceptions are very common among the students” (p. 1).\u00a0 Upon a literature review, Rane (2015) has also found that, “most of the students believe that…heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones” (p. 2).\u00a0 Upon conducting analysis using a 15 item free fall diagnostic test, it was found that “…students [believed] heaver objects…take half the time [while others believed] lighter [objects]…move faster” (p. 6).\u00a0 It is clear that the concept of free fall is challenging.\u00a0 I have designed the following T-GEM lesson to assist students in understanding free fall and associated ideas like mass, acceleration, velocity, and velocity-time graphs.<\/p>\n
Khan (2007) describes the GEM process as a “…cyclical pattern in which students [generate], [evaluate], and [modify] hypotheses…” (p. 877).<\/p>\n
Khan (2007) highlighted an important prerequisite to the GEM cycle.\u00a0\u00a0 It is important to have a small but important didactic lesson on introductory and background information that helps students make sense of the data in the first place.\u00a0 If the students don’t know what they are looking at, seeing relationships in the data becomes difficult.<\/p>\n
Free Fall Lesson<\/p>\n