Determining the Misunderstandings of Physics and Science Teacher Candidates about the Events Related to the Buoyancy Force

The purpose of the study is to explore how pre-service teachers perceive buoyancy force affecting an object in a liquid and identify their misunderstandings and misconceptions. Pre-service teachers were interviewed to reveal their understandings of an object' floating, suspending and sinking in a liquid. In addition, they were asked about how an object-given its features-moved when it is provided with an external force and when it is released. The so-called circumstances were questioned in a different planet context. For this aim, focused group interview method was used. Work-group of the research was formed with senior year physics teaching department students and senior year sciencs teaching department students studying at two different university in Turkey. Seven focused groups were formed and video recorded during the interval. Each focused group comprised of six pre-service teachers. It was found out pre-service teachers have common misunderstanding and misconceptions. In this study, unlike similar studies, it was determined that pre-service teachers had misunderstandings about the movement that a floating object would take after it was sunk and released. In addition, it has been determined that pre-service teachers have some misunderstandings when the events related to the buoyancy force are repeated on a planet where the gravitational acceleration is different. At the end of the study, suggestions were made to eliminate these conceptual misunderstandings.