Students’ understanding and application of the area under the curve concept in physics problems

dc.creator	N. Sanjay Rebello
dc.creator	Dong-Hai Nguyen
dc.date	2011-06-01T00:00:00Z
dc.date.accessioned	2015-07-20T22:12:32Z
dc.date.available	2015-07-20T22:12:32Z
dc.identifier	1554-9178
dc.identifier	https://doaj.org/article/da5f212ede2643328503b4c549e4b3f4
dc.identifier.uri	http://evidence.thinkportal.org/handle/123456789/15306
dc.description	This study investigates how students understand and apply the area under the curve concept and the integral-area relation in solving introductory physics problems. We interviewed 20 students in the first semester and 15 students from the same cohort in the second semester of a calculus-based physics course sequence on several problems involving the area under the curve concept. We found that only a few students could recognize that the concept of area under the curve was applicable in physics problems. Even when students could invoke the area under the curve concept, they did not necessarily understand the relationship between the process of accumulation and the area under a curve, so they failed to apply it to novel situations. We also found that when presented with several graphs, students had difficulty in selecting the graph such that the area under the graph corresponded to a given integral, although all of them could state that “the integral equaled the area under the curve.” The findings in this study are consistent with those in previous mathematics education research and research in physics education on students’ use of the area under the curve.
dc.language	English
dc.publisher	American Physical Society, APS
dc.relation	http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.7.010112
dc.relation	https://doaj.org/toc/1554-9178
dc.source	Physical Review Special Topics. Physics Education Research, Vol 7, Iss 1 (2011)
dc.subject	Education (General)
dc.subject	L7-991
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.subject	DOAJ:Education
dc.subject	DOAJ:Social Sciences
dc.subject	Education (General)
dc.subject	L7-991
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.subject	DOAJ:Education
dc.subject	DOAJ:Social Sciences
dc.subject	Education (General)
dc.subject	L7-991
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.subject	Education (General)
dc.subject	L7-991
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.subject	Education (General)
dc.subject	L7-991
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.title	Students’ understanding and application of the area under the curve concept in physics problems
dc.type	article