A ascensão e queda da teoria do calórico
The aim of this paper is to make a historical analysis of the appearance of the caloric theory, its explanatory power and its decline. Unlike many texts disclose, we will show that Joseph Black was not the first to investigate the heat as a substance and that the experiments of Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) were not crucial to the abandonment of this theory. The explanatory power of the caloric will be shown by analysis of extracts from the book of dissemination of Science authored by Janet Marcet. We believe that the knowledge of these facts will help to better understand the origin of many terms that we use in the study of the calorimetry, besides alerting teachers and students of the historical claims errors found in textbooks.
A História da Ciência por meio do teatro: A Teoria do Calórico contada em cena
A Historia da Ciencia vinculada ao teatro forma uma parceria importante para o ensino de ciencias. Algumas pesquisas mencionam a importância dessa relacao tanto para o ensino, como para a divulgacao da ciencia. Neste sentido o presente trabalho teve como objetivo produzir um material didatico que podera ser usado por professores de fisica do ensino medio para abordar a teoria do calorico numa perspectiva historica por meio do teatro. O trabalho e de natureza qualitativa e se desenvolveu em uma turma de segundo ano do ensino medio da escola Hortensio de Sousa Ribeiro- PREMEN, localizada na cidade de Campina Grande. Refletimos sobre a busca de alternativas de utilizacao da Historia da Ciencia em sala de aula, por meio de estrategias que envolvam mais os estudantes da escola, a considerar todos os aspectos antes citados e por entendermos a viabilidade de uso de alternativas metodologicas inovadoras em sala de aula.
Rouelle and Stahl—The Phlogistic Revolution in France
WHEN Lavoisier began his work in chemistry, the phlogiston theory was the generally accepted chemical doctrine in France. As a unifying principle, this theory had much to recommend it; phlogiston was used primarily to explain combustion reactions, but also to account for physical and chemical properties ranging from the nature of color to the causes of fluidity and volatility. Despite its shortcomings, the phlogiston theory was so adaptable that to question its validity was to raise a host of difficult theoretical problems. To say that the phlogiston theory alone dominated French chemistry is in reality to oversimplify the situation. Because phlogiston was an essential part of chemical theory and because the debates over its very existence raged for many years, phlogiston has come to epitomize and indeed to summarize in one word eighteenth-century chemistry before Lavoisier. This modern view would have surprised the chemist Guillaume Francois Rouelle (1703-70), whose career encompassed the period before the polemical literature on phlogiston began to appear.1 For Rouelle, phlogiston was but a single component of a more comprehensive theory: his ?4element-instrument theory." Among his contemporaries Rouelle's reputation as a chemist was based primarily upon his outstanding ability to teach. But he was also called the "Restorer of French Chemistry"2 and the person who had done most "to popularize chemistry in France in revealing to us for the first time the secrets of Germany, and in adding to it the soundest Theory and the surest experiment."3 The German chemistry referred to is the work of Georg Ernst Stahl and his disciples, which remained relatively unknown in France for at least the first thirty years of the eighteenth century. While it is perhaps an exaggeration to say that Rouelle introduced a knowledge of Stahlian chemistry into France, he was certainly responsible for the popularization and eventual acceptance of a modified Stahlianism in the course of the century. * 109 College Avenue, Ithaca, New York. 1 For an account of Rouelle's life and work, see the author's "G.-F. Rouelle: An Eight eenth Century Teacher and Chemist," Chymia, 6, 68-101 (1960). 2 Johann Friedrich Meyer, Essais de Chymie, trans. P.-F. Dreux, 2 Vols., Paris, 1766, Vol. 1, "Avertissement du Traducteur," p. xvii. 3 Cours de chymie de M. Rouelle, r?dig?par M. Diderot et e'clairciparplusieurs notes, 1258 pp., Biblioth?que de Bordeaux, MSS 564-565, p. 982b, note 1. Hereafter cited: Bordeaux MS. 73