Cognition and Culture, a weblog devoted to cognitive science and anthropology, has an interesting post about folk theories of physics. People naturally subscribe to a view they call “impetus physics”, where objects only move if they receive an impetus from an outside agent, which leads to a variety of false predictions. Physicists learn to give the right predictions, but a recent experiment showed that when asked to make intuitive predictions under some circumstances physicists will revert to the intuitive folk theory.
Science 13 July 1973:
Vol. 181. no. 4095, pp. 173 - 174
DOI: 10.1126/science.181.4095.173
Observation Is Insufficient for Discovering that the Surface of Still Water Is Invariantly Horizontal
Hoben Thomas 1, Wesley Jamison 1, and Donna D. Hummel 1
1 Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park 16802
Among women college students who did not know that the surface of still water in a bottle is always horizontal, two types of specific task procedures designed to elicit self-discovery of the principle were ineffective. Failure to acquire the concept was reflected in inaccurate responses on the adjustment task and by inability of students to verbalize a correct strategy.