Weight, gravity and air pressure: Mental representations by Italian middle school pupils

The research reports an investigation concerned with schemes of commonsense knowledge connecting the three elements weight, air and gravity to the phenomenon of free fall. Inferences about the mental representations of Italian middle school pupils (12‐13 years of age) have been gathered by interviewing a sample of 40 children, using a number of different questions and searching for the possible consistencies among the whole set of answers. Three schemes are suggested: in the first, the force of gravity operating on the weight of the objects causes their fall; in the second, the force of gravity and weight are two independent causes for the fall of objects; and in the third the force of gravity, weight and the phenomenon of fall are unrelated entities. Air is implicitly or explicitly invoked as a cause of either weight or gravity, or both.