A Balança Hidrostática e o Princípio de Arquimedes: impactos de uma sequência didática pautada em fontes primárias da História da Ciência

In teaching materials, regarding Archimedes' Principle, the reproduction of the pseudo-history related to the problem of the adulteration of the crown of the king of Syracuse, narrated in the work De Architectura, by Marcus Vitruvius, is still noted. This narrative attributes to Archimedes a method that is contradictory to historical evidence, imprecise and physically unfeasible. In his work La Bilancetta, Galileo suggested that Archimedes would have used a Hydrostatic Balance to solve the crown problem. From a didactic point of view, the discussion of this mechanism can favor the approach to the concept of buoyancy and Archimedes' Principle. Thus, we planned and applied, in the context of Basic Education, a didactic sequence based on the discussion of primary sources from Vitruvius and Galileo, and the reproduction of a Hydrostatic Balance as a historical experiment. In this work, we discuss the educational impact of the proposal, based on the analysis of responses from students who participated in this intervention to a research instrument.