Foucault's pendulum exhibition in 1851 occurred in an era now known by development of the theorems of Coriolis and the formulation of dynamical meteorology by Ferrel. Yet today the behavior of the pendulum is often misunderstood. The existence of a horizontal component of Newtonian gravitation is essential for understanding the behavior with…

Inhelder and Piaget (1958) studied schoolchildren's understanding of a simple pendulum as a means of investigating the development of the control of variables scheme and the "ceteris paribus" principle central to scientific experimentation.The time-consuming nature of the individual interview technique used by Inhelder has led to the development…

The following paper is intended as an exercise in "friendly criticism" of one of Harvey Siegel's and Mike Smith's ("Knowing, Believing and Understanding", this volume). I'm in substantial sympathy with the general thrust of their paper and my remarks merely provide some criticism of their discussion's conceptual coherence and clarity and a…

Pendulums which swing in two dimensions simultaneously and are designed to leave a record of their motion are termed "harmonographs". The curves which they draw are known, alternatively, as "Bowditch curves" or "Lissajous curves". A variety of designs of harmonographs have been invented over the years. These may be a "Y-suspended" "simple"…

In this article we use the pendulum as the vehicle for discussing the transition from classical to quantum physics. Since student knowledge of the classical pendulum can be generalized to all harmonic oscillators, we propose that a quantum analysis of the pendulum can lead students into the unanticipated consequences of quantum phenomena at the…

A pendulum "engine" with dynamic parameters can be created and pendulum functions manipulated and analyzed using interactive elements in Flash. The effects of changing the damping (convergence) properties, initial release angle and initial velocity conditions can be explored. The motions then can be digitized using the Flash Digitizer 1.1,…

This paper describes life-span development of understanding about pendulum motion and effects of school science. The subjects were 2,766 people ranging from kindergartners up to 88 years senior citizens. The conflict and consensus between children and their parent's understanding of pendulum motion were also analyzed. The kindergartner's…

In light of the established validity of the pendulum as a topic in physics curricula (Matthews 2000), the study looked at the place of pendulum motion in the physics curriculum of the high school in Israel.The data is available through presenting results of the nationwide matriculation examination in its units of Mechanics and Research Laboratory…

In this article I explore a case for the inclusion of some aspects of critical thinking and of philosophy of science within science education that appeals to two commonly accepted aims of science education. Although motivated by reading Harvey Siegel's "Educating Reason" (1988), and emerging from his discussion there, the aspects I explore go…

What is a teacher to do when confronted with a student who says "I understand that theory (e.g., evolution), but I don't believe it"? The purpose of this article is to provide a rationale for answering this question. First we describe the various ways in which the terms "know/knowledge" and "believe/belief" are used and summarize the distinctions…

Recent research literature in science education, science curriculum documents, and science methods texts have been highly influenced by constructivist views of how students learn science. But the widespread and often uncritical acceptance of constructivism in science education does not reflect the heated debate between constructivists and…

The study and utilisation of pendulum motion has had immense scientific, cultural, horological, philosophical, and educational impact. The International Pendulum Project (IPP) is a collaborative research effort examining this impact, and demonstrating how historical studies of pendulum motion can assist teachers to improve science education by…

The term "random" is frequently used in discussion of the theory of evolution, even though the mathematical concept of randomness is problematic and of little relevance in the theory. Therefore, since the core concept of the theory of evolution is the non-random process of natural selection, the term random should not be used in teaching the…

When identifying instruments that have had great influence on the history of physics, none comes to mind more quickly than the pendulum. Though first treated scientifically by Galileo in the 16th century, and in some respects nearly "dead" by the middle of the 20th century; the pendulum experienced "rebirth" by becoming an archetype of chaos. With…

Teaching Newtonian physics involves the replacement of students' ideas about physical situations with precise concepts appropriate for mathematical applications. This paper focuses on the concepts of "matter" and "mass". We suggest that students, like some pre-Newtonian scientists we examine, use these terms in a way that conflicts with their…