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…

Most educational literature on conceptual change concerns the process by which introductory students acquire scientific knowledge. However, with modern developments in science and technology, the social significance of learning successive theories is steadily increasing, thus opening new areas of interest to discipline-based education research,…

The theory of the Big Bang is accepted nearly universally among the scientific community. However, there is a small cadre of individuals who dispute this consensus and they point to a handful of datums that don't fit into the picture. One such datum is the existence of a star with an age reported to be older than the cosmos itself. This star is…

Issues associated with nature of science (NOS) have long been recognized as an essential component of scientific literacy. While consensus exists regarding the importance of an explicit reflective approach, precisely how to teach NOS remains elusive. The present study explores one particularly promising approach, namely the use of historical…

Most physics teachers have observed the majestic swings of a monumental pendulum at a science museum and have watched long enough to see the plane of oscillation slowly changing direction as Earth turns. The purpose of Don Olson's article is to describe visits to Paris sites related to Jean Bernard Léon Foucault (1819-1868), with a special focus…

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…

"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…

Over 200 years ago, Alessandro Volta published his observations of a steady voltage when a piece of electrolyte-soaked cardboard was sandwiched between two dissimilar metals. This observation initiated a century of argument as to the origin of voltaic electricity (contact vs chemical) and catalyzed practical advances, such as the first…

The history of particle physics can be considered nothing less than a huge triumph for science. Over the course of a little more than a century of effort, our understanding of the world of atomic and subatomic physics went from a vague understanding of atoms, to one that is much more detailed. Early in this hundred-year-long period, we learned…

This article considers Australian receptions of C. P. Snow's "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution" (1959), and of the controversy over the literary critic F. R. Leavis's combative 1962 response to it. Taking a lead from conceptual insights in global histories of science and the history of knowledge, the paper considers the…

Einstein's theory of general relativity (GR) provides the best available description of gravity. The recent detection of gravitational waves and the first picture of a black hole have provided spectacular confirmations of GR, as well as arousing substantial interest in topics related to gravitation. However, to understand present and future…

This project report describes the process of a team of undergraduate researchers (Chemistry and Nursing majors), who analyzed 20th-century medical kits housed at The Columbus Museum (Columbus, GA, USA). Curators and museum personnel were unfamiliar with the contents and needed assistance in identifying the various chemical contents. Items were…

This qualitative study examined teachers' science teaching orientations (STO) and their purposes for integrating the history of science (HOS) into their teaching using newly developed instructional materials. The HOS may be used as an effective instructional tool for achieving scientific literacy; however, science teachers utilise it in various…

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…