UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ CONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE MOON PHASES

Abstract

In this article we describe the development of a multiple choice test about lunar phases and analyze the results of its application to ten groups of Physics students at the UFRGS. During the improvement of the test, we noticed that the percentage of right answers about some concepts increased significantly when associated with the reformulation of the question, emphasizing the importance of being careful to avoid incorrect answers generated by unclear questions, and not by ignorance on the matter. We confirm the results of other studies that show that students have great difficulty to relate the Moon´s phase with its position in the sky at given time. On the other hand, our results suggest that, in general, students of Physics understand the phenomenon of lunar phases better than the average of university students.