Students’ Mental Models about the Suspending Objects in Static Fluid

Research Article

Abstract

This study aims to explore the mental models of elementary, junior, senior, and university students about hanging objects in a fluid. It involved 57 participants from grade 5 of elementary schools to fourth-year prospective physics teachers. The data collection used a test consisting of twenty-six essay and four multiple-choice items, which covered several contexts and factors. The types of mental models that were successfully explored include the density-, mass-, weight-, volume-, and gravity-based models, etc. Consequently, the dominant participant mental model was the synthetic one, followed by the initial and scientific level, respectively, and the adopted mental models tended to form a hierarchy based on the academic levels. The results showed that the hanging models tended to be adopted and was influenced by the mental model in the floating and sinking contexts. This result confirms the findings of previous studies, which stated that mental models depend on the context of the phenomenon being presented. The existence of variations in the participants' mental models for reasoning about density and depiction of floating objects revealed gaps in the consolidation of their mental models. In learning activities, it is not enough to teach the concepts of floating and sinking. Hence, an adequate portion for the hanging concept must be provided by depicting various object positions and emphasizing a more conceptual density model.