Erroneous mental models of fludis in solid body rotation: students lack intuition about processes central to understanding the ocean and atmosphere

Abstract

A common pedagogical tool in undergraduate oceanography and atmospheric science courses is a water filled, rotating, tank used to model geophysical fluid dynamics. These models can help students bridge the gap between abstract concepts learned in class and fluid processes that are otherwise difficult to directly observe. In this study, we investigated student conceptions of fluids in solid body rotation, the starting condition for more complex rotating tank demonstrations and a well-aligned model of fluids on a rotating planet. With 32 student participants, we conducted semi-structured, interactive interviews in conjunction with rotating tank demonstrations to elicit participants’ sketched predictions of the behavior of dyed water in solid body rotation and explanations of their reasoning. Using emergent coding to analyze the data, we found that although participants had accessible mental models of fluid behavior in solid body rotation, their mental models were wrong. We used an intuitive physics framework to interpret these results and propose that the behavior of rotating fluids is highly unintuitive and without tangible opportunities for mental model formation, yet the mind adopts mental models of fluids spinning up from rest to fill this gap. We discuss implications for education and suggest that a better understanding of how humans reason about fluids can give us a more complete picture of intuitive physics specifically, and event-models more generally.