Contact and Non-Contact Interactions
- Forces act only through touch: Difficulty conceptualizing how magnets or
gravity can pull on something without physical contact. - Air doesn’t exert a force: The belief that air is “nothing” and therefore cannot
push (upthrust) or pull (drag) on an object. - Pressure and Force are the same: Not understanding that pressure is a force
distributed over an area. - Upthrust only acts in water: The belief that buoyancy doesn’t apply to objects
in the air (like balloons). - Passive forces don’t do anything: Thinking that “blocked” motion (like a wall
stopping a person) isn’t the result of a force being applied by the wall.
