Newton-3: a software for teaching dynamic interactions

Abstract. The educational software presented in this work, is a web-based application, designed for the topic of 3rd Law of Newton. The software covers a series of several cases from gravitational interaction to electrostatic. The software sets a series of 11 “Lab ” activities, and in each Lab, students are given a problem of interaction and are asked to place the forces. The software is structured on an interactive dialog-basis, where a pictorial “expert ” changes faces and makes comments upon students ’ response. Cases examined in the “Labs ” and expert’s comments are selected on the basis of students ’ conceptions. Each “Lab” consists of subsequent steps, where students are gradually introduced from the concept of “one body exerts force to the other ” to the concept of “mutual action”. In this work we present the design of the educational software developed. Some preliminary results on the logging capabilities of the software are also presented and discussed in brief