AN ANALYSIS OF PROOFS OF THE PYTHAGOREAN THEOREM GIVEN BY BRAZILIANS: Rebouças, Constant, Telles and Mendes
Pythagorean Theorem. Brazilians. Demonstrations.
The objective of this research is to analyze demonstrations of the Pythagorean Theorem developed by Brazilians. Methodologically, it is a documentary analysis, which has as one of its main sources articles from the Digital Newspaper Library, dissertations written in the multipaper style, present in research in the field of Mathematics Education and draws on the source of researchers in the field of History, Le Goff (1990) and Bloch (2001). As theoretical support, mathematical elements such as line segments, perpendicular and parallel lines, triangles, rectangles, hypotenuses and legs, similarity of triangles, equivalence, among others, were used. The object of research is the analysis carried out on the demonstrations given by André Pinto Rebouças, Benjamin Constant Botelho Magalhães, Augusto Carlos da Silva and Raymundo Teixeira Mendes. The demonstrations developed by these four Brazilians were of the Pythagorean Theorem, which is the identity a² = b² + c², where a, b and c are positive numbers, representing straight line segments, where a is the hypotenuse, and b and c are legs of any right triangle. The four demonstrations analyzed here were developed in a geometric way, with different perspectives, each with its own peculiarities. It is hoped that this work can contribute inside and outside the university, producing knowledge, generating new ways of looking at mathematics and the Pythagorean Theorem.