A importância da história da ciência nas aulas experimentais de física: o Versorium de William Gilbert

Abstract

The history of science is a very important element in helping students to better understand the context in which scientific discoveries took place. In addition to enabling a deeper look at a given model from the experimental limitations of scientists at a given time. In addition, it helps the student to understand that the construction of knowledge is something dynamic, undergoing changes and additions over the years. With this in mind, we developed the present work, with the aim of discussing the importance of the history of science in experimental physics classes. For this, a group of 15 students from a private school was presented with a video about the Versorium by William Gilbert, presenting the value that this experience had for the study of electrical and magnetic phenomena, followed by a video with an experiment using this equipment. Afterwards, students answered a questionnaire to assess, among other things, what they thought of inserting the history of science to show the historical context in which the discoveries occur, as well as what they think of videos about hysics experiments. As one of the results, we saw that practically all students liked the proposal to have a little history of science in experimental classes. And that, regarding the use of videos about physics experiments, although they liked it a lot, they preferred experimental classes. From the discussions made in this paper, we hope they can inspire high school physics teachers to introduce more science history into their physics classes.