In 1985 Rosalind Driver and Lynda Warrington (as she was then) published ‘Students’ use of the
principle of energy conservation in problem situations’. This paper (Driver and Warrington 1985
Phys. Educ . 20 [http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0031-9120/20/4/308] 171
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0031-9120/20/4/308] ), cited at least 36 times to date, is one of many in
the Physics Education archive looking at what is almost a perpetual discussion device, the question
of how we teach energy.