Notes

Our Fluid Pressure Concept Builder targets student understanding of pressure in liquids (primarily) and gases. A strong emphasis is placed on the concept that pressure at a given location depends upon the depth below the surface of the liquid. Density effects arise a couple of times. The first activity consists of purely multiple choice questions. But most questions in the second and third activities will present three locations to the student and request that they determine the relative pressure at each location. Students will have to inspect the information presented in the diagram and sort out the extraneous information (volume of the liquid, shape of the container, distance from the bottom of the container) from the relevant information (depth of the location below the surface and the density of the liquid). We believe that repeated exposure to this need to differentiate between the extraneous and the relevant will improve students' reasoning skills with respect to the concept of fluid pressure.

The Fluid Pressure Concept Builder is comprised of 68 questions. The questions are divided into 18 different question groups. Questions in the same group are rather similar to one another. The Concept Builder is coded to select at random a question from each group until a student is successful with that group of questions. The questions and question groups are organized into three different activities. The activities are differentiated as follows:

• Fluid Pressure Concepts Question Groups 1-6: Students are presented six multiple choice questions that probe the fundamental nature of fluid pressure.
• Case Studies Question Groups 7-12: Students are pressented two situations involving pressure in a fluid. They must compare the fluid pressure for those two locations.
• Ranking Tasks Question Groups 13-18: Students are presented a diagram with three marked locations. They must identify how the locations rank with respect to the fluid pressure.

Before using the Concept Builder with your classes, we recommend that teachers attempt each of the activities in order to determine which are most appropriate for your classes and what pre-requisite understanding a student must have in order to complete it. Alternatively, the Questions are provided in a separate file for preview purposes.

In order to complete an activity, a student must correctly analyze each question in that activity. If a student's analysis is incorrect, then the student will have to correctly analyze the same or very similar question twice in order to successfully complete the activity. This approach provides the student extra practice on questions for which they exhibited difficulty. As a student progresses through an activity, a system of stars and other indicators are used to indicate progress on the level. A star is an indicator of correctly analyzing the question. Once a star is earned, that question is removed from the cue of questions to be analyzed. Each situation is color-coded with either a yellow or a red box. A red box indicates that the student has incorrectly analyzed the question and will have to correctly analyze it twice before earning a star. A yellow box is an indicator that the question must be correctly analyzed one time in order to earn a star. Once every question in an activity has been analyzed, the student earns a Trophy which is displayed on the Main Menu. This system of stars and trophies allows a teacher to easily check-off student progress or offer credit for completing assigned activities.

The most valuable (and most overlooked) aspect of this Concept Builder is the Help Me! feature. Each Question Group is accompanied by a Help page that discusses the specifics of the question. This Help feature transforms the activity from a question-answering activity into a concept-building activity. The student who takes the time to use the Help pages can be transformed from a guesser to a learner and from an unsure student to a confident student. The "meat and potatoes" of the Help pages are in the sections titled "How to Think About This Situation:" Students need to be encouraged by teachers to use the Help Me! button and to read this section of the page. A student that takes time to reflect upon how they are answering the question and how an expert would think about the situation can transform their naivete into expertise.

We do not have a lot of resources on the topic of Fluids at The Physics Classroom website. What we do have is listed below. We hope to be adding more in the future.