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The Resolution number 3 of the Câmara de Educação Básica (CEB)/Conselho Nacional de Educação (CNE), published in 1998, June 26 (BRASIL, 1998), which established the National Curriculum Guidelines for High School Education, emphasizes the interdisciplinarity, in its 8th Article. However, almost fourteen years later, the reality in most of our schools is the adoption of a merely disciplinary methodology, vis-à-vis the difficulty related to educational planning activities of this kind. In this paper, we present a proposal of an interdisciplinary experimental activity that addresses the concept of surface tension, connecting physicists and chemists. The idea is that students determine the alcohol content of "cachaça" and discuss the concepts of surface tension forces between equal molecules, similar and different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sound production on musical instruments is a fundamental referent for the acoustics teaching in secondary and higher education. One main feature found amid established models for approaching acoustical phenomena in Physics is linearity. Indeed, researches in the field of musical acoustics indicates that most musical instruments involve fundamentally nonlinear processes without which one can not understand the operation of these instruments. In this paper, we contribute to the discussion of acoustical phenomena in teaching Physics, approaching the limits of the hypothesis of linearity in musical acoustics from a specific instrument: the transverse flute. We discuss the acoustic wave equation (the equation that governs the propagation of sound waves in fluids such as air), highlighting the assumptions that underpin this equation and its validity. In fact, the validity of acoustic wave equation is closely related to the question of linearity on acoustical phenomena. Finally, we discuss the technique of excitation of the transverse flute (embouchure) to find it an essential nonlinearity involved in producing sound with this instrument. We believe that this discussion is a contribution to the refinement of the established models in approaching acoustical phenomena in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work we present an analysis on the types of question from the first ten tests of the Brazilian Olympics of Astronomy and Astronautics (OBA). This paper examines the formulation of unique answer questions in the Astronomy issues, trying to point out elements for the elaboration of questions based on the rationalization of the answers, i.e. the linking of knowledge and not the simple placement of data to be substituted in previously memorized equations. The questions were classified according to closed problems or unique answer questions criteria, which are the basic skills necessary for students to use the time to resolve them. The ways to get the right result, the questions were classified as: direct knowledge (type 1), calculation (type 2), reasoning and knowledge (type 3), understanding (type 4) and questions of Science technology and society (type 5). It is observed through the editions of OBA that the types of questions tend to appear in all level tests. In each level the type 3 and type 4 questions, claims the same percentage, however, there is a percentage reduction on type 1. The number of questions that use the simple memorization of responses in High School has decreased over time as well. For example, in the I OBA questions of simple memorization there was a 32.4% and 53.3% in II OBA, but in the test of the IX OBA the percentage was 10% and there is still a reduction of 2.9% from the IX to the X OBA. The classification and the detailed of the results are presented showing that the questions of OBA, wherever possible, have converged to more questions of the 3 and 4 types and less on questions of type 1. In the initial series of tests, the percentage of simple memorization questions, or type 1 decreased from 77.8% in VII OBA to 35.7% in the X OBA. The largest difference in percentage occurred in the 5th to 8th series (eight years scheme) or 6th to 9th series (9 years scheme) of Elementary School, where the percentage reduced from 35.7% to 5.6%, since the VII to the X OBA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]