The historical development of the Fahrenheit scale and the imaginary of Physics teachers and students

Abstract

In the present work we study the mismatch between the complex history of the development of the Fahrenheit scale and the way Physics textbooks, teachers and students of Physics think about such development. Initially, a survey of some High School Physics textbooks of physics was done. Another survey of the opinions of a set of Physics teachers and university students of Physics was conducted through a series of semi-structuralized interviews. With such interviews we searched to find out their understandings regarding the utility of the Fahrenheit scale, as well as the reasons they attached to the fixed points 32 and 212 of that thermometric scale referring to the points of ice fusion and boiling of water. The outcomes of our study reveals an enormous historical unfamiliarity and a certain ability to produce or simply to reproduce some pseudo-historical versions that could seem reasonable. We also show that a more accurate historical analysis of the development of the Fahrenheit scale can be sufficiently instructive to illustrate the way a historical research develops. In particular, the need for rational reconstructions and the roles attributed to the contexts of the discovery and the justification are clearly enhanced in this inquiry.