Purpurogallin (PPG), an orange-red crystalline compound from nutgalls and oak bark, is an exemplar of numerous, ubiquitous natural colorants, biosynthesized through oxidative dimerization-decarboxylation of phenolic compounds. It possesses antioxidant, anticancer, and anti-inflammatory effects. Herein, a robust method is presented to allow…

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…

Should we, and how do we, develop in our students a sense of period -- or a series of senses of period -- in a thematic study spanning a thousand years? This was the problem faced by Matthew Fearns-Davies in preparing for the GCSE 'Health and the People' paper. He shows in this article the ways in which he considered the problem of chronological…

We describe an educational activity that can be completed with mobile media devices in order to understand the working principle of a pair of tuning forks, from the Historical Collection of Physics Instruments of the University of Palermo, and how they were used to explain acoustic interference and beats with the Lissajous optical method. This…

This article introduces and contextualizes the content of this theme issue of "The American Biology Teacher" (ABT), which focuses on integrating elements of the history of science (HOS) in biology instruction. Such orientations can enhance students' understanding of core biological concepts and the process of scientific discovery by…

For some scientific ideas, it is obvious to pupils as to why they are studied. For others, a bit more work is needed before their significance becomes apparent. The concept of 'historical significance', which is used in history teaching, can help children to appreciate the enduring importance of scientific discoveries and events. The pedagogic…

Many physics learners take the specific mathematical representations they are using as part of their learning and doing physics for granted. The paper addresses this problem by highlighting two goals. The first is to show how a historical investigation from history of science can be transformed into a concrete lesson plan in physics, in a physics…

In this paper, we present and discuss a teaching strategy for the concept of energy at high school based on history and philosophy of science (HPS) and dealing with Joule's experiment (Joule J. Philos Mag 3(31):173-176, 1847a) and Rankine's definition (Rankine W. Edinburgh New Philos J 3:121-141, 1855). This sequence has been developed and…

An interdisciplinary approach to science education through history of art is proposed. The approach is innovative, as the artworks complement the history, philosophy and sociology of science contents to increase students' interest and motivation. The approach integrates humanities and science education through history of art, which requests…

The pandemic COVID-19 has brought the closure of schools of all levels and all universities in Italy, since early March 2020 up to the end of the teaching period (first half of June 2020). However, almost all universities guaranteed the continuity of educational and professional courses by using several distance education modalities. The purpose…

We propose explicit and implicit approaches for the teaching of acid-base chemistry based on research into the history and nature of science (NoS). To support these instructional proposals, we identify four rationales for students to understand acid-base processes: daily life, socio-scientific, curriculum, and history of science. The extensive…

Helping students understand that the scientific community's claims change through time, sometimes radically, allows them to develop a well-grounded sense of the "nature of science." Learning to reason about how scientific claims come to be accepted, and later refuted, is important for understanding the tentative nature of scientific…

Helping students understand the Nature of Science (NOS) is a long-standing goal of science education. One method is to provide students examples of science history in the form of short stories. This article modifies that approach, using historical case studies to address both the history of science and the history of technology, as well as the…

In my contribution I would like to offer three different examples: the activities of the association "Förderverein Hamburger Sternwarte", science education in the "astronomy workshop", and the teaching of the history of science and technology for university students.

This paper describes a new approach towards the implementation of history of physics in physics education. Reconstructed historical instruments are given to secondary school students. These students are requested to analyze these devices with the aim of collecting sufficient information in order to build their own working version of this device.…