Angular and linear acceleration in a rigid rolling body: students’ misconceptions

The purpose of this paper is to highlight students’ misconceptions of the kinematics of rolling movement and to show mechanisms that can help the student to overcome them. In particular, it focuses on the relationship between the angular and linear acceleration of a rigid body that moves without slipping. Frequently, physics books show particular examples of rolling movement instead of treating the underlying physics. Consequently, students can develop misunderstandings that lead to errors when solving more general cases. In this paper, I suggest how the physics teacher can deal with these problems. First, I discuss how to best teach the kinematics of the plane movement in a rigid body. Second, I propose several examples that can point out the misconceptions to the students and help them to restructure their knowledge.