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The main objective of this paper is to determine the degree of importance that experimentation has in physics education. To that end, a project was developed with 18 first-year high school students from a private institution in Maringá, Paraná State, during the 3rd bimester of the 2006 school year. Research and production were done by the students outside school hours, and every 15 days a physics class was given to answer questions. Over the course of these classes, we noticed that, in spite of the difficulties faced by the students, what effectively happened were moments full of joy, enthusiasm and motivation, which really got our attention, as the students had been put in a new situation. During that period, information was collected through reports by the participants in the project, as well as photos and videos produced by them. Ten months later, an interview was conducted with each student who had participated in the project to observe whether the experimentation can contribute effectively with the teaching and learning process, providing good results in student learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]