ARE UNIVERSITY TEXTBOOKS’ EXAMPLES EASY TO UNDERSTAND? THEANALYSIS OF AN EXAMPLE ON HAMILTONIAN.

This work presents a study on the characteristics of the textbooks used in the upper courses of Physics careers. The study consists of an analysis of the hamiltonian in Analytic Mechanics which is carried out in two stages: in the first one an example was characterized; in the second one, several interviews with professors were performed. The importance of this study lies in the fact that textbooks are one of the main instructional materials used by senior undergraduate students so that if those texts are not easy to understand, students will make an enormous effort to learn from them and this cognitive effort might not contribute to a good performance. On the basis of this analysis, it is concluded that the example does not result in an easy reading for students. Moreover, the interviews show that the characteristics of the example make the reading difficult for those who try to learn from it.