Representations of knowledge in a program for solving physics problems

Abstract

A computer program which solves physics problems stated in English is described in terms of the knowledge which is used to transform one type of representation into another. The English sentences of the problem statement are progressively transformed into a semantic network form, a language-free internal model of the objects in the problem and their attributes and relationships, a set of canonical object frames which interpret actual objects as canonical objects (such as a point mass) , a geometric model, a set of equations, and a picture model. The general notion of a canonical object frame, which abstracts a subset of the properties of an object to form a representation of a canonical object whose interactions with related canonical objects can be formally modelled, is discussed as a method of organizing problem-solving programs. 1.