Field: General questions of physics

Name of the supervisor: Lenka Czudková

The title of the thesis  (2008/09):

Pitfalls of the secondary-school mechanics

Brief characterization of the topic:

Secondary-school textbooks of mechanics are traditionally divided into number of thematic parts, presented practically independently (Kinematics of a particle, Dynamics of a particle, Conservation laws, Gravitational field, Mechanics of a rigid body and Mechanics of the liquids). Thus, among the students, there can arise an image that physics is „ some dry and incomprehensible discipline that is full of a lot of unconnected laws and formulas“. The thing is that in the conception of textbooks, the following important fact disappears: secondary-school mechanics is based just only on the complete understanding and application of Newtons laws. 

The task of the doctoral student is to read up  both contemporary and previous textbooks of mechanics and disclose  the „pitfalls“, i.e. the points that are for secondary school students and for beginning university students - due to the  fact that the parts of  the textbooks are rather independent- problematic. The aim is to write down the consistent text based on rigorous application of the Newtons laws which cover and connect through individual parts of the textbooks.

The thesis is suitable for the graduate of the field  „Secondary-school teaching of physics“.

Basic literature:

[1] Contemporary and previous secondary-school textbooks of mechanics.

[2] Nečas T.: Physics for secondary schools. Mechanics. (Alternative textbook – Thesis)

(http://physics.muni.cz/~awasin/mechanika.pdf). (In Czech)

[3] Halliday D., Resnick R., Walker J.: Physics, Prometheus Praha and Vutium Brno, 2003. (Translation into Czech)

[4] Kvasnica J. et al.: Mechanics, Academia, Praha, 1988. (In Czech)

Consultant: Jana Musilová