Play dough circuits: a tangible and friendly medium for understanding physics

Abstract

Students consider that physics is difficult because of its abstract nature and the involvement of mathematics. One of the most difficult topics is a simple direct current circuit. Physics education research shows that students learn better when they construct their own understanding of scientific ideas within the framework of their existing knowledge. To accomplish this process, students must be motivated to engage with the content actively and be able to learn from that engagement. The purpose of this research was to compare the grade 6 students’ understanding of the scientific concept of simple direct circuits before and after participating in a STEM activity that involved the building of circuits from play dough. Twenty questions from the Interpreting Resistive Electric Circuit Concepts Test were selected to evaluate students’ reasoning regarding direct current resistive electric circuits. Findings revealed that the students’ scores working with the different conditions after learning were significantly higher than they were before learning. However, analysis on learning progress showed that the group that had to create more works had higher normalized gain than the group that created less works. When the work was analysed with rubric criteria, it illustrated that more conditions caused more complexity and diversity to the work. In short, the condition or situation set to students affected work creation.