Rocket stove as a proposal of experimental practice for the teaching of Physics

Abstract

Experimental practices enable students to an environment in which learning occurs interactively, thus giving them the opportunity to create hypotheses and test them in an environment where the teacher is the mediator in the teaching-learning process. Due to the low supply of laboratories equipped in some locations, it is necessary to resort to alternatives, especially those with low cost and sustainable proposals. This article presents qualitative results as well as a proposal for the teaching of thermodynamic topics using as a didactic object the rocket stove, which has been studied worldwide for being less polluting and more energy efficient than stoves that use biomass available for economically vulnerable regions of the world. Because it is a common theme for most of the students involved, in the activity proposed in this article the rocket stove, besides facilitating the teaching of physics concepts, allowed a discussion about sustainability in the context of the experimental class. The experimental practice was made within the proposal of the divergent laboratory, because in this type of environment, the student has more freedom to be the main promoter of their learning process, besides allowing an interactive participation between groups. A quantitative proposal based on the studies of Okonkwo et al (2017) is also presented in this article for a more advanced physics class. In general, after the performance and during the experiment, the students’ excitement about the way they were learning physics was notorious, for going beyond the traditional rigid methodology of theoretical classes.