Construção de instrumentos técnicos de astronomia para a divulgação científica: telescópio fotométrico de grande abertura e baixo custo

Although the popularization of astronomy in the last decade and the International Year of Astronomy, celebrated in 2009, there's a great lack in respect of quality instruments for astronomical disclosure. Thinking in this research about it, we intend to recuperate and elucidate a technique long forgotten: the metal mirror amateur telescope, once was done in the first reflecting telescopes. However, with the resources available today and given the high purity of the materials, our results were better than that obtained by the pioneers. We developed and built a large aperture telescope (250 mm diameter) and very bright (focal ratio = 4.0), versatile and portable. In our study was described step by step the process to fabricate the telescope. Through its first images captured of the Moon, we can illustrate its versatility both for use in outreach events and for use in amateur astronomy, because it is a primary focus capture system and can run registration of various astronomical events

Nothing too much: reflecting about the role of contextualization in science teaching

The contextualization and discussion about the science role in the social and economical development are unquestionably important for the science teaching process. It doesn't mean, however, that the scientific-theoretic knowledge and the strategies involved in its construction and application might be neglected. In this way, a dangerous situation is created when the contextualization is assumed as a unique and primordial target in science education. This paper presents a research carried out with 15 future chemistry teachers and the results show a worrying "supervalorization", of the contextualization beside other equally important aspects of the chemical knowledge.