(1018) WITH FUNCTIONS IT IS POSSIBLE TO CREATE CARTOON IMAGES

摘要

The study of functions and their graphs is done in high school both with pen and pencil work and withthe help of graphical calculators. Nevertheless the time they spend with this study, students reach theuniversity showing enormous difficulties in elementary calculus courses, namely in what involves theknowledge of graphs of functions, for instance, they always show to be insecure in computing thevalue of areas, volumes and length of lines.Teaching at university is essentially formal and abstract, and poorly prepared students quickly give up,and ending choosing to study something else that doesn't require mathematics.The project described in this work was designed for students finishing high school or starting theuniversity, and its main scope is to interest students in the study of functions in a playful and notconventional way. Students are invited to create a mathematical model for sketching known objectslike glasses or bottles. With some practice they can begin drawing animals and even understand howthey can give the illusion of movement. This project helps students to better understand the behaviourof function graphs under geometric transformations, and also develops their skills in what concernsdefining the appropriated limits of a restriction of a given function. These skills are fulcral when theyneed to evaluate an area or a volume.We present a collection of cartoon images and their associated "mathematical recipes", produced byourselves or by our students under our supervision.