Abstract:

Projectile motion is usually the first thing a freshman student covers when they take a mechanics course in their first year in the university. The typical way of teaching this topic is by showing the student the kinematic equations in the x-direction and the y-direction and stating that these two motions are connected yet the way they change is different. Many students find this fact hard to grasp and struggle when it comes to problem solving. This struggle stems from the lack of understanding of this simple yet nontrivial motion.

Recently, technology has been used widely in physics education. The world wide web is full of animations that describe different physical phenomena. Students nowadays have access to a plethora of tools to help them enhance their understanding. However, students rarely use them since it is not part of their syllabus. Our goal is to get students to actually look at animations as part of their class. This will enhance their perception of the motion especially when the x-motion and the y-motion can be separated during the motion as a whole.

Keywords:

Learning technologies, visual learning tools, projectile motion.