Teacher's manual for Forces and Newton's laws

Introduction

Welcome to the Forces and Newton's laws module. This module serves as the third part of a dynamics course, introducing the concept of force and covering Newton’s laws of motion.

Course description

This module is suitable for high school students, at which level it is appropriate for blended learning, as well as for early college or applied university students, at which level it can also be employed in a flipped classroom or remedial setting.

Description of the course: This module covers the notion of forces in physics, Newton's laws, further examples of forces, and problem-solving strategies for problems involving Newton's laws.

Study load: Between 0.75 and 1 ECT.

How to organize your course

Below, you can find a selection of suggested exercises for classroom demonstration and for student practice. Later in this document, you can also find a sample diagnostic test. Assuming a four hour per week class load, this module (including its introductory chapter) can be covered in three weeks.

Assessments

Below, you can find a selection of exercises that are suitable for diagnosing a student's level in the contents of this module. Note that knowledge of significant figures is required to solve most of the exercises in this chapter.

Teacher's tools and resources

Best practices and tips

It is crucial to understand the notion of independent perpendicular motions and to master vector decomposition (obtaining the #x#- and #y#-components from the original vector) and recomposition (obtaining the direction and magnitude from the components). These skills are taught in previous modules and are regularly necessary to solve problems related to Newton's second law. Moreover, it is crucial to master free-body diagrams before venturing into the second subchapter, "Forces and applications of Newton's laws".

The last topic of the "Forces and applications of Newton's laws" subchapter does not involve computations and can be considered optional. It is, however, a particularly good topic to foster curiosity for further physics studies.

The chapter contained in this module is adapted from the fourth chapter of the OpenStax book College Physics 2e. Our exercise packages contain adapted exercises from the OpenStax book as well as original SOWISO exercises. Further practice material can be found in the OpenStax page of the College Physics 2e book.

Additional resources

This module requires basic knowledge of motion, which can be found in Sowiso's One-dimensional motion and Two-dimensional motion modules. Moreover, it requires basic mathematics knowledge as a prerequisite. These can be found in chapters 1 through 8 of SOWISO's Basic Math course. In particular, no differentiation or integration is needed to complete this module.