Contents of atomic and molecular structure in Spanish general Chemistry textbooks (1928-1978)

Abstract

In this work we present an analysis of the contents of atomic physics and quantum chemistry in introductory textbooks written in Spanish and published between 1928 and 1978. In total, we have studied forty pre-university and twenty-eight university books, using a Grounded Theory methodology for the codification of the contents. Our results show that the distance between the contents of the textbooks and that of the technical discourse of scientific literature has widened over the span covered in our study. In particular, on the one hand, classic or pre-quantum ideas are not discarded. On the other, no relevant ideas produced after the decade of 1930 are incorporated into the contents of the textbook analyzed.