A CASE STUDY OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS ASTROPHYSICAL CONCEPTION SURVEY ON THE KEPLER’S SECOND LAW OF MOTIONS AND NEWTONIAN MECHANICS IN PHAYAO

Watcharawuth  Krittinatham; Kreetha  Kaewkong

Authors

Watcharawuth Krittinatham Division of Physics, School of Science, University of Phayao, Phayao, 56000, Thailand.
Kreetha Kaewkong Science Education programe, Faculty of Education, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, 50200, Thailand.

Keywords:

Astrophysics Education, Physics Education, Kepler’s second law of motion, Newton’s law of motion

Abstract

We survey the conceptual understanding in classical mechanics and applying classical mechanics principles for describing astronomical models (Kepler’s second law of motion) among an experiment group of Phayao high-school students. Our results from the group reveal more than half of the students can apply the law of equal area to angular speed and describe this phenomenon by gravity force, circular motion, and distance from star/sun which is the parent star of the system. However, they cannot explain by using conservation of angular momentum which is another physical process in the Physics course content. Some students are lack of understanding about action-reaction force (Newton’s third law) when they try to describe physical forces in stellar/solar system. Moreover, the mathematical concept used to represent force, i.e. vector, is another important difficulty in teaching Astronomy or Physics.

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