O blogue como ferramenta de divulgação da história da ciência: o experimento de Cavendish

Abstract

This research intends to address a lack of historical studies which can be useful to science teaching. We propose posting a historical episode on a blog to reach teachers who want to use history and philosophy in their classes. We chose the Henry Cavendish experiment about the density of the Earth as the historical episode and the methodology adopted was to divide the research into three distinct steps. First, we performed the historical and epistemological study about the episode. We looked for the primary and secondary sources which helped us to understand the experiment and the hypotheses already done proposed on about the value of the Earth s density and how it was related to the gravitational law proposed by Isaac Newton. Then, we considered how this episode can make explicit some aspects of the nature of science, such as the role of the experiment in the construction of a theory and the controversies about the value of the density during the 18th century. We also explored the physics concepts related to the Cavendish experiment such as the torsion pendulum, torque and moment of inertia. The second goal was to investigate why and how blogs are employed in science teaching and in the history of science. This investigation helped us define the necessary elements in our blog to interact with teachers and students and, at the same time, to propose a historical material based on specialized studies. The third step consisted of preparing the text and complementary activities to post on the blog and to complement the blog with pictures, drawings, sound files, original sources, etc. (http://lordecavendish.blogspot.com.br/). Because the nature of the blog is dynamic and in progress, this research is partly finished and will depend on the answers and suggestions posted in the future by the followers to know if it has achieved its purpose. The construction of the blog is only the first part of a bigger project that intends to inform science teachers of the history of science by an in-depth study and presentation of historical material.