William Herschel (Fig. 1) is rightfully known as one of the greatest astronomers of all time. Born in Hanover (in modern Germany) in 1738, Herschel immigrated to England in 1757 and began a successful career as a professional musician. Later in life Herschel developed a strong interest in astronomy. He began making his own reflecting telescopes in…

At the Deutsches Museum in München, we established in the department of education during more than 35 years a series of historical experiments and constructed apparatus for pedagogic purposes. We use these reproductions mainly for continuing teacher education within our department. At the exhibitions of the Deutsches Museum there exist many…

The paper is an extended work from a previous study on Taiwanese and German students' conceptions of the universe (Liu, 2005). The study revealed that students discuss astronomical events and entities based on a mental model of universe and their models of the universe seem to have similar underlying principles with historical ones. In present…

A recent study (Liu, 2005a, 2005b) revealed a limited number of alternative models of the universe held by young students in Taiwan and in Germany. In line with the previous findings, these alternative models frequently fall into two groups: earth-centred and sun-centred views, which draw a correspondence to the ideas in the European history of…