USE OF THE IDEAS OF ARISTOTLE'S IN THE TEACHING OF THE PHYSICS

The objective of this article is to analyses the ideas of Aristotle and their influence on teaching. To this effect, we shall give a series of practical examples as evidence that those ideas are still in practice.

The constant reiteration of errors is verified in the interpretation and in the physical conceptions during the resolution of questions and problems, related with the constant appearance of Aristotelian ideas in the reflection of the physical world.

Unfortunately, many times teachers tell the students about these errors and we influence them negatively. However, we can also use them to emphasize certain physical concepts.

The procedure that will be used is based on the use of a questionnaire formed by diverse questions that they affect to key concepts of the Physics, to be able to make up the sensibility and the assistant’s interest toward the problem. In the following examples, we can see an objective view of two of Aristotle’s ideas. They appear in an objective way. This way, the students manifest the sense of the movement of the bodies in the same sense and caused by the immanent force. Inclusive they give to that force a special reason, that is to say an own existence, not related with the interactions or the resultant of these interactions.

This questionnaire was applied to a community of future physics teachers, and the results evidence the regularity of the existence of Aristotelian representations in thought of teachers, what takes to the conclusion that it needs a methodological revision.

The situations and the questions have been deliberately presented so that the students would use Aristotelian reasoning, and later they could apply their concepts and study more deeply the Mechanical frame of the World on the basis of Newton’s ideas.

It is very interesting to present to students questions, experiments, problems, comments, interpretations, so the “Aristotelian virus” it is activated in their thought and, consequently, to teach them to activate the “antivirus” so in the opportune moment the jump of mental quality takes place and pass of the Aristotelian representations, to the Galileans, to the Newton’s and finally to the Einstein’s.