Resumen de The use of force notation to detect students’ misconceptions: Mutual interactions case

Ahcene Serhane, Abdelhamid Zeghdaoui, Mehdi Debiache

• Using a conventional notation for representing forces on diagrams, students were presented with questions on the interaction between two objects. The results show that complete understanding of Newton’s Third Law of Motion is quite rare, and that some problems relate to misunderstanding which force acts on each body. The use of the terms "action" and "reaction" in this specific context, compared with their general use, was also found to be misleading.