Different ways of thinking and ways of talking about the concept of heat from the use of experimental activities

Abstract

The objective of this work is to identify the zones of the conceptual heat profile that emerged in the speeches of high school students through the realization of five experimental activities, existing in the literature, each one related to a specific zone. The Conceptual Profiles Theory presents the idea that a single concept can have different meanings, ways of thinking, which can be used in different contexts, depending on its pragmatic value. The experiments were carried out with six high school students from a state school in Serra Talhada, Pernambuco, with data collected from the audio sound recording, separated into clippings and then transcribed to identify emerging zones. The results show the emergence of all zones of the conceptual heat profile, namely: realistic, empirical, substantialist, animist and rationalist, in addition to mobilizing the use of other related concepts in the explanation of the experiments, such as temperature, energy and thermal sensation.