The purpose of this work is to study the effectiveness of our introductory mechanics instructions in
changing students’ misconceptions about Newtonian concepts. We gave the force concept inventory
(FCI) test to 341 of our students twice, before and after instructions. The data were analyzed using
a method first reported by Martín-Blas et al (2010 Eur. J. Eng. Educ . 35
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2010.497552] 597
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2010.497552] – 606
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2010.497552] ). We examined all of the known misconceptions
found in the original paper by Hestenes et al (1992 Phys. Teach . 30
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.2343497] 141 [http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.2343497] – 51
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.2343497] ) and determined the dominant ones from students’ incorrect
answers for each of the 30 questions in the inventory. By comparing the d…