JPII 6 (1) (2017) 1-10 Jurnal Pendidikan IPA Indonesia http://journal.unnes.ac.id/index.php/jpii SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN SOLVING IMPULSE AND MOMENTUM PROBLEMS A. M. Saifullah 1* , Sutopo 2 , H. Wisodo 2 1 Postgraduate of Physics Education, Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia 2 Department of Physics, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia DOI: 10.15294/jpii.v6i1.9593 Accepted: February 15 th 2017. Approved: March 4 th 2017. Published: 30 th April 2017 ABSTRACT Impulse momentum theorem is one of the fundamental principles of physics, especially in mechanics. Therefore, students’ understanding of impulse and momentum will contribute to their success in learning physics. This study exposed common students difficulties in solving problems related to impulse and momentum. The subjects consisted of 175 students of a Senior High School in Malang, 70 students of grade XI who recently learned about impulse and momentum and 105 students of grade XII who relearned the topic for national examination prepara- tion. The data were gathered using multiple-choice test with open explanation and confidence rating scale. The study concluded that the students’ difficulties were not only caused by their lack understanding of the concepts but also by their deficiency in using vectors. © 2017 Science Education Study Program FMIPA UNNES Semarang Keywords: students’ difculties; impulse and momentum; student conceptual understanding INTRODUCTION One of the important goals of learning physics is to facilitate students to grasp funda- mental physics concepts and to apply them to sol- ve related physics problems. However, to reach these aims is not as easy as one thinks. It is be- cause students often have mistakenly formed con- ceptions when they come to physics lessons (Ha- lim et al., 2014) or they have not understood the basic knowledge before they learn new concepts (Turányi & Tóth 2013). Many physics educators label such mistaken or contradicting thoughts as misconception (Lawson, 1995; Hammer, 1996; Chamber & Andre, 1997; Yalcin, 2008; Docktor & Mestre, 2014). Misconception is the leading cause of students’ difficulties since it is hard to be changed (Sencar & Eryilmaz, 2004; Hung & Jonassen, 2006; Stylos et al., 2008; Docktor & Mestre, 2014; Widarti et al., 2016) and it would interfere with students’ construction of new kno- wledge (Osborne et al., 1983; Turányi & Tóth, 2013). On the other hand, physics consists of a hierarchy set of knowledge, so according to the theory of constructivism, understanding of the prerequisite knowledge is necessarily to compre- hend new concepts. Therefore, when designing a physics lesson teachers need to be aware to stu- dents’ misconceptions and the concepts that stu- dents tend to be difficult to understand. Many studies have uncovered students misconceptions and difficulties in many branches of physics. In mechanics, for instance, most stu- dents face difficulties on one-dimensional motion (Trowbridge & McDermott, 1980; Trowbridge & McDermott, 1981; McDermott et al., 1987), Newton’s law (Halloun & Hestenes, 1985; Thorn- ton & Sokoloff, 1998; Brown, 1989; Demirci, 2008; Rosenblatt & Heckler, 2011; Elmehd et al., 2013), rotational dynamic (López, 2003; Ortiz, 2005; Oliveira, 2011), conservation of energy *Alamat korespondensi: E-mail: anisa.matinu@gmail.com