Teaching 10th grade physics, through the reading of Don Quixote. Newton’s laws and the adventure of the windmills

Abstract

We present in this paper a new methodology focused on the learning of Dynamics topics through the reading of the famous Quixote’s Windmills Adventure. We compare the effect produced in learning by this innovative methodology versus conventional methods in 10th grade students (16 years old). Pupils are given an active role in this new methodology: they become the main protagonists of learning because scientific problems have to be formulated and solved by them. The results obtained suggest that this reading-based methodology is able to produce moderate progress in the learning of the force concept and the Newton’s laws. The improvement of the results may be justified by a major implication of the pupils in that type of assignments and the motivation element that produces the use of a different methodology in the class.