Abstract:

Students at various levels of physics education regularly encounter a set of numerical data that shows some trend. Depending on the level of education, we talk about the relationship between physical quantities, physical dependence, or a function. As our previous theoretical analyzes have shown, many situations with a physics context led to the relation of quantities with an exponential character. However, a survey of a small sample of pre-service physics teachers drew our attention to the fact that the students perceive the exponential function intuitively rather than consciously working with the given concept. It turns out that their experience with the exponential function comes mostly from physics classes and less from math lessons. In mathematics itself, exponential dependence occurs explicitly only in the later stages of education, it is not addressed at the elementary school level. Thus, physical experience and intuition precede conscious mathematical experience and targeted work with a specific mathematical function. At the same time, research and experience say that when solving physics problems, it is essential to know the concept (exponential function) and also the context (the specific situation where we will use the given function). In the paper, we present an analysis of several physics contexts at the elementary school level that lead to the introduction of the exponential function, although the students do not directly name it as such. Students often have a hidden concept of the exponential function in their minds, but they don't call it like that and work with it more intuitively. The teacher's task is to find a suitable context at an appropriate level and work with it. We must also not forget that a concept isolated from context does not lead to building appropriate knowledge.

Keywords:

Exponential function, school physics, physics education, intuition, tacit knowledge, science education.