How history and philosophy in the US Science Education Standards could have promoted multidisciplinary teaching

School Science and Mathematics, Oct 1998 by Matthews, Michael R

Elaborating this "useful result," he said, A certain and permanent measure of magnitudes, which is not subject to chance modifications and which cannot be abolished, corrupted, or damaged by the passage of time, is a most useful thing which many have sought for a long time. If this had been found in ancient times, we would not now be so perplexed by disputes over the measurement of the old Roman and Hebrew foot. However, this measure is easily established by means of our clock, without which this either could not be done or else could be done only with great difficulty. (Huygens, 1673/1986, p. 167)

In brief, Huygens said that, first, a seconds clock is to be built and tested against the rotation of the fixed stars (as described on pp. 23-25 of his book), then a pendulum is to be set swinging with a small amplitude and its length adjusted until it swings in time with the seconds clock, then

...measure the distance from the point of suspension to the center of the simple pendulum. For the case in which each oscillation marks off one second, divide this distance into three parts. Each of these parts is the length of an hour foot .... By doing all this, the hour foot can be established not only in all nations, but can also be reestablished for all ages to come. Also, all other measurements of a foot can be expressed once and for all by their proportion to the hour foot, and can thus be known with certainty for posterity. (p. 168)

His basic unit of length was thus to be 3 horological feet (0.9935m), less than a millimetre short of what would become, after a considerable amount of political struggle, the original metre (Heilbron, 1989; Alder, 1995). This is the sensible and understandable standard lying behind the seemingly incomprehensible and arbitrary standard of modern textbooks: "the distance travelled by light in 1/299,792,458 of a second."

The humble pendulum thus played a large role in the formation of the modern world. Clearly, the pendulum can play a larger role in the modern science classroom. The Standards recognize that a proper education in science should encourage children to see and understand something of the "big picture" of science, that is, the interrelatedness of science with other disciplines, technology, and culture.

Pendula in the US Science Education Standards

There is a marked contrast between the historical importance of the pendulum and the mere two pages devoted to it in the Standards (NRC, 1996, pp. 146147). Students are asked to make pendula of different length, weight, and amplitude. The model class, in small groups, goes through the usual exercises, and "after considerable discussion, the students conclude that the number of swings in a fixed time increases in a regular manner as the length of the string gets shorter" (p. 147). Students are asked to use their graphs to make a pendulum that will swing an exact number of times. It is concluded that "students have described, explained, and predicted a natural phenomenon and learned about position and motion and about gathering, analyzing, and presenting data" (p. 147). The document says of the model lesson, that "assessment, constructing a pendulum that swings at six swings per second, is embedded in the activity" (p. 146).