Transição da física clássica para a física moderna: uma análise sobre as grandezas de espaço, tempo e massa no 3º ano do ensino médio em Bonito de Santa Fé/PB.

Abstract

The present work seeks to discuss the conceptions of the students from third year of high school in a Technical Integral Citizen School in the city of Bonito de Santa Fé/PB regarding the topics of space, time and mass in the view of both Classical Mechanics and Special Relativity. The concepts referred above constitute the central object of this work and were raised through the application of a didactic sequence based on David Ausubel's theory of meaningful learning. The sequence was elaborated by considering the educational context in which the insertion of Modern Physics topics in high school is important. During the execution of the work, an action research was carried out with the purpose of evaluating the relevance of certain pedagogical strategies where not only science is discussed, but also the process of construction of scientific knowledge referring to Modern Physics. Based on the historical analysis and the definitions of the worked quantities, we highlight some moments that were considered as the most relevant within the rupture of Classical Physics to Modern Physics addressed in the classroom. Such moments address the transformations involving space and time (both considered as absolute quantities) by Galileu and Newton, the coherence of Galileu's relativity for light and electromagnetic phenomena, the problems that Classical Physics could not answer, the postulates of Einstein's Relativity with relative space and time (thus initiating the so-called Modern Physics) and, finally, Mass-Energy equivalence. For data collection, initial and final tests were used, from which the analyzes showed a significant increase in the number of students who started to recognize the definitions of space, time and mass in the classical and relativistic view and describe them correctly as a result of the action of this work.