This article describes a research with physics undergraduate students in two distinct public institutions. The group of 23 observed students was composed exclusively of students from sixth, seventh and eighth period. The research sought to identify possible conceptual problems of the students, their abilities to identify the level of difficulty of the problem; also, it was examined the extent that undergraduates dominate mathematical calculus as a tool for troubleshooting. It was presented to the students a problem taken from a federal university college entrance test. Due to an error in the preparation, this problem can only be solved with higher education mathematical tools. Students also answered a semi-structured questionnaire that identified their perceptions about the problem. Based on the analysis of the written collected material, we see that only two students were successful in the task, and more than half of them failed to interpret the problem conceptually.
Keywords:
Physics education; Mathematics education; conceptual problems
