Los estudiantes y la propagación de las señales mecánicas: Dificultades de una situación de varias variables y procedimientos de simplificación

Abstract

This paper analyses the general ways of reasoning used by students when learning the propagation of a signal on a string. Tendencies towards a reduction of the number of variables can be brought out. On the one hand, students tend to combine the variables into a single notion. Their reasoning seems to be based on the idea of a material object (here the bump on the string), described through this single notion. On the other hand, they consider simultaneously never more than two variables so that relations they have learned are changed into binary associations. From this analysis, some pedagogical implications are derived.