Taking Advantage of the “Big Mo”—Momentum in Everyday English and Swedish and in Physics Teaching (original) (raw)

This research explores the concept of momentum in both everyday language and physics teaching, highlighting the discrepancies between common usage and precise scientific definitions. It identifies three clusters of reasoning—gut dynamics, lay dynamics, and physicists' dynamics—that contribute to student misunderstandings in Newtonian mechanics. The study suggests leveraging the term 'momentum' as a teaching tool to bridge these gaps, encouraging students to reconcile their intuitive and socially influenced understandings with formal scientific concepts.