Newton and the decomposition of sunlight by a prism: what High School textbooks bring about it?

• Autor(a) principal: Sobrinho, Marcos Fernandes
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Outros Autores: Carneiro, Maria Helena da Silva
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista de Ensino de Ciências e Matemática - REnCiMa
• Texto Completo: https://revistapos.cruzeirodosul.edu.br/rencima/article/view/894
• topic: Livro didático de Física; Transposição Didática; PNLD/2012; Decomposição da luz; Physics textbook; Didactic Transposition; PNLD/2012; Decomposition of light

Based on some constant demands stated in the official documents issued by the Brazilian Ministry of Education as well as the ones set by the currently accepted scientific knowledge, the present work intended to identify and analyze which associations the authors of physics textbooks do between the wise knowledge based on the work by Isaac   Newton (1642-1726) from 1672 to 1704, besides other ones about optics, and the knowledge on how to teach. A documental research was developed having as theory the assumptions of the systematic study about Didactic Transposition proposed initially by M. Verret (1975) in Sociology and restated, in Mathematics Education,  by  Y.Chevalard (1991, 2005). The analysis of the textbooks was based on a methodology which has been already tested, validated and used in previous researches (CALDAS, 1994; CALDAS; SALTIEL, 1999; CUNHA; CALDAS, 2000). It was possible to identify the contributions to the school physics that are present in some of such textbooks to explain the decomposition of light as wells as to get evidence of some of the theoretical-conceptual aspects that are considered essential to a better understanding of concepts that permeate the topic. It was verified that there is, from the conceptual point of view, a kind of divorce between the way chosen by the authors of the analyzed textbooks (knowledge on how to teach) to present aspects of the decomposition of light by a prism and what seems to have been proposed by Newton (1672, 1704) to the Theory of Light and Color (wise knowledge), relatively to the currently accepted scientific conception.