Verbal imagetic approaches related to Coulomb’s electrical balance in Physics textbooks

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to analyze verbal imagetic approaches on Coulomb’s eletrical balance of repulsion in ten Physics textbooks used in Brazilian High School education. The analysis was done considering three categories of Perales and Jiménez’s taxonomy: the degree of iconicity of images, the relations of the image with the main text and verbal labels, and, more specifically, the meanings that these labels attach to the images. The categories were analyzed individually in each book and guided by three questions from corresponding researches. The theoretical framework consists in researches that enhance distinct possibilities and limitations regarding the use of images, notably when used with educational purposes, in historical references that include the development of electricity and magnetism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, besides the First Memoir on Electricity and Magnetism, in which Coulomb described the procedures to build the experimental apparatus of the aforementioned balance. The analysis reveals that the imagetic representations on the balance do not accurately reproduce the rigor required by the apparatus, and even those categorized as photographic representations do not mobilize the constitution of the experimental apparatus. Textual approaches regarding the torsion electrical balance are usually disconnected on the verbal labels and imagetic representations of the experimental apparatus. In addition, they underestimate the complexity of the constitution of the apparatus by prioritizing some conjectures arising from interpretations of the experimental results. We conclude that the verbal imagetic representations of the Coulomb electrical balance, in textbooks analyzed, are not adequately mobilized in order to contribute to the understanding of the underlying concepts of the experimental apparatus that was previously mentioned.