The Gravity-Powered Calculator is an exhibit of the Exploratorium in San Francisco. It is presented by its American creators as an amazing device that extracts the square roots of numbers, using only the force of gravity. But if you analyze his concept construction one can not help but recall the research of Galileo on falling bodies, the inclined…

This article will explore the intersection between "literature" and "science" in one key area, the botanical poem with scientific notes. It reveals significant aspects of the way knowledge was gendered in the Enlightenment, which is relevant to the present-day education of girls in science. It aims to illustrate how members of…

Many of the major figures in the history of science have produced literary works, but the relationship between their poetic texts and their scientific work is often underestimated. This paper illuminates the poetry of Erwin Schrödinger--one of the premier figures in twentieth-century science, and an accomplished poet in both English and his native…

Various science education researchers believe that science tuition should include some discussion about how science has developed over time. Therefore, deliberations about the nature of science should be integrated in the science curriculum. Many researchers argue that teaching the history of science is a good way to place the nature of science in…

This study examines how focusing on the notion of "poeticality" (poetical forms) can provide functional insights with respect to the narrativeness of physics teaching. From this perspective, through both a meaning-making and aesthetic approach, this article explores how vehicles such as verse and rhetorical figures--metaphor, irony,…

The prevailing view is that Mathematics and Poetry have nothing in common. However, if we look below the surface and dig a little deeper into two of the most important human activities throughout recorded history, surely we will discover kindred elements and similarities unseen at first glance. The poetry of Odysseas Elytis will help us to bring…

The 1920s and 1930s were a period which saw great popular interest in radiation and radioactivity in America, and the establishment of a new genre of pulp literature, science fiction. Radiation was prevalent in American popular culture at the time, and sf stories were dependent upon radiation for much of their color and excitement. In this case…

The aim of this paper is to investigate in a systematic and comparative way previous results of independent studies on the treatment of genes and gene function in high school textbooks from six different countries. We analyze how the conceptual variation within the scientific domain of Genetics regarding gene function models and gene concepts is…

The primary focus of this article is to illustrate how teachers can use contemporary socio-scientific issues to teach students about nature of scientific knowledge as well as address the science subject matter embedded in the issues. The article provides an initial discussion about the various aspects of nature of scientific knowledge that are…

Life sciences became Biology, a formal scientific discipline, at the turn of the nineteenth century, when it adopted the methods of reductive physics and chemistry. Mendel's hypothesis of inheritance of discrete factors further introduced a quantitative reductionist dimension into biology. In 1910 Johannsen differentiated between the…

Uncertainty about ethics has been a major factor in societal rejection of biotechnology. Six factors help create a societal "perfect storm" regarding ethics and biotechnology: Social demand for ethical discussion; societal scientific illiteracy; poor social understanding of ethics; a "Gresham's Law for Ethics;" Scientific…

This essay explores the career of the understudied writer Pedro Castera (1846-1906), who is regarded as one of the first practitioners of science fiction in Mexico. A man of many talents, Castera is one of the most eccentric and eclectic figures in the intellectual life of fin-de-siècle Mexico City. His career took many turns: While during…

In recent decades, Science & Technology Studies (STS) have revealed the dynamic interaction between science and technology and society. Technology development is not an autonomous process and its artifacts are not socially inert. Society and technology shape each other. Technologies often have "soft impacts" in terms of unpredicted…

In this paper we present a matrix-organised implementation of an experimental course in the history of the concept of a function. The course was implemented in a Danish high school. One of the aims was to bridge history of mathematics with the teaching and learning of mathematics. The course was designed using the theoretical frameworks of a…

This paper describes a classroom experiment where students use techniques found in the history of mathematics to learn about an important mathematical idea. More precisely, sixth graders in a primary school follow Archimedes's method of exhaustion in order to compute the number p. Working in a computer environment, students inscribe and…