The genesis of Hell and Purgatory in Divine Comedy by Dante: a possible bridge between physics and literature

Abstract

In the first decades of the twelfth century, Dante Alighieri wrote the Divine Comedy. A text that describes a mythical journey in which the author describes the Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise based on cosmology, philosophy and theology of his time. The crater of the Hell and the mountain of the Purgatory have been formed by the fall of Lucifer on the Earth, after his rebellion against God. The central idea of this paper is to motive students from the calculation of physical quantities using, as background, the cosmogony of the Middle Ages. In this context, it is estimated the speed and the mass of Lucifer. It is hoped that this work can help to bridge the gap between Physics and Literature.

Keywords

• didática da física
• divina comédia
• formação do inferno
• formação do purgatório
• massa de lúcifer