O ensino de relatividade através de técnicas diagramáticas

Abstract

This work reports on the development of a mini-course entitled “Teaching Relativity through Diagrams: Challenges and Possibilities”, designed for physics undergraduates and High-School teachers. The main objective of the mini-course was to introduce a powerful and innovative diagrammatic approach, developed and published by Robert Geroch in the 1970s, with strong pedagogical appeal for teaching the Theory of Relativity. The mini-course was conducted at the Federal Institute of Education, Science, and Technology of Piauí (IFPI) – Campus Picos, over five days, totaling 10 hours of activities. Over the course of these days, the following topics were addressed: i) the notions of spacetime, events, and world lines and world surfaces; ii) the Aristotelian and Galilean views on motion; iii) the concept of spacetime interval and its importance in the construction of Einstein’s relativity; iv) the main results of Einstein’s theory, such as time dilation and length contraction. During the mini-course, participants were also evaluated through pre- and post-tests to measure their progress in understanding the concepts related to the Theory of Relativity. Classroom discussions of the expected answers for the tests suggest that the diagrams helped facilitate the understanding of concepts, although some participants expressed difficulties with the approach. The study concludes that, despite the challenges, the use of diagrams proved to be a promising tool for visualizing and understanding abstract concepts.