Our Students Hold Over 20 Non-Newtonian Misconceptions: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern

We have found over 20 misconceptions of students taking Introductory Mechanics, and have analyzed how well instruction lessens belief in them. Misconceptions are found from a sample of ~60k administrations of the Force Concept Inventory by applying Hierarchical Bayesian modeling plus dimensional rotation to the Multidiimensional Nominal Categories Model(1) to discover small clusters of wrong answers showing consistent reasoning that were preferentially selected by associated sets of students. These misconceptions are alternative hypotheses (to Newton), and include ideas about animate and inanimate objects learned by infants, ideas codified by Aristotle and other Greeks, medieval physics of impetus (a property of moving inanimate objects), and modern exceptions to Newton’s Laws. “Traditional” misconceptions are poorly overcome by current instruction for average and below-average students, but we discovered many “Naïve” ones that are currently well remediated. These methods can guide instructors and physics education researchers to make our pedagogy more effective and equitable.

(1) A multidimensional Bayesian IRTmethod for discovering misconceptions from concept test data Martin Segado, Aaron Adair, John Stewart, Yunfei Ma, Byron Drury and David Pritchard

Frontiers in Psychology DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1506320