Free Body Diagrams Beyond Free Body Diagrams

The free body diagram is a tool used in virtually all introductory physics courses as a way to analyze force problems. One standard introductory approach is to put all of the forces acting at the center of the mass and perform a Newton’s Second Law analysis. Does this help students get a physical sense of what is happening? Some thoughts on how to present/construct the free body diagram is described that may help put the physical back into the physics for students is presented. More examples of how this approach could be used are presented.