In this article, we discuss the replication of a forgotten chemical instrument in the context of undergraduate chemistry education. Together with students, we have attempted to replicate an eighteenth century "eudiometrical" procedure. Eudiometry was the practice of measuring the "goodness" of the air by looking at the volume…

Cell size is an important variable in the study of cellular growth, metabolism, and the cell cycle. The large size of "Amoeba proteus" and the ease with which it can be collected and cultured have made it a star in biology education--and it was a model for research on cell biology before the introduction of molecular genetic methods.…

It is well known that Newton's work on mechanics depended in a crucial way on the previous observations of Galileo. The key insight of Galileo was that one can analyze the motion of bodies using experiments and mathematical equations. One experimental observation that roughly emerges from this work in modern terms is that two objects of different…

This lesson used the correspondence of Charles Darwin as an exploration of nature of science (NOS) in a historical context. Specifically, we used his original correspondence about his "provisional hypothesis" of pangenesis as a novel way to explore a scientist's social community. Darwin's community of friends and colleagues in the…

"American Biology Teacher" has published over seven dozen articles relevant to the history of biology in biology teaching. They are cataloged here and indexed by topic. As reflected in this archive, teachers adopt a historical approach for many pragmatic motivations: (1) to engage students, by contextualizing science culturally; (2) to…

A popular introductory physics laboratory experiment is one focusing on Snell's law. This is straightforward to complete with lasers and prisms, but here we present an alternative version that guides the students through some of the major historical developments, recreating and analyzing significant experiments. The discovery of Snell's law has a…

In high school, and also in introductory physics courses in higher levels of schooling, the law of universal gravitation of planets is introduced by postulating Johannes Kepler's three laws, and later Isaac Newton's law of the inverse of the square of the distance to the Sun. The justification of the laws is only achieved in advanced courses in…

"Makerspaces, Innovation and Science Education: How, Why, and What For?" is an attempt to interrogate questions about the history, philosophy, and sociology of science and schooling that have long troubled science educators. In crafting the book, the author, Michael Tan, uses the microcosm of makerspaces to move back and forth to…

The objective of this second part of the work is to present heuristic derivations of the three classical tests of general relativity. These derivations are based on the Einstein equivalence principle and use Newtonian physics as a theoretical framework. The results obtained are close to Einstein's original predictions. Historical and anecdotal…

The formulation of the periodic system by the Russian Mendeleev was followed by the surprising discovery of gallium by the Frenchman de Boisbaudran. The Englishman Ramsay's explanation of an 'impurity' in air led to recognition of a new period. A young fellow countryman, Moseley, justified the expected existence of 92 elements. A German couple,…

Student understanding of the laws that describe the flow of a fluid is often hampered by a defective knowledge of basic classical mechanics (kinematics, statics, dynamics, and conservation laws) and by wrong common-sense ideas about quantities related to fluids, such as velocity and pressure. A pedagogical discussion about the Venturi effect,…

The long and complex history to define the composition of water as H[subscript 2]O is summarized. This case study could be useful not only to introduce the history of chemistry in the classroom but also to teach the basic tenets of the nature of science (NOS). Water has been present in several turning points in the history of chemistry such as the…

As long has been known, there is no perfect way to teach science. This paper makes no claim to be the 'be-all and end-all' of science education. Rather it critically examines what we teach learners in science and what they learn and tries to offer suggestions that can help teachers to surmount the scholastic inadequacies they tend to encounter in…

As long has been known, there is no perfect way to teach science. This paper makes no claim to be the 'be-all and end-all' of science education. Rather it critically examines what we teach learners in science and what they learn and tries to offer suggestions that can help teachers to surmount the scholastic inadequacies they tend to encounter in…

Many teachers like to introduce the Bohr atom toward the end of an introductory physics course. This is an excellent idea, given the historic importance of Bohr's 1913 work, which provided the bridge from Planck's quantized interaction of matter and radiation (1900) to the full theory of quantum mechanics (1925-28). Unfortunately, the version of…