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Transformations: the material representation of historical experiments in science teaching
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2023
Abstract
Some experiments from the history of physics became so famous that they not only made it into the textbook canon but were transformed into lecture demonstration performances and student laboratory activities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While, at first glance, some of these demonstrations as well as the related instruments do resemble their historical ancestors, a closer examination reveals significant differences both in the instruments themselves and in the practices and meanings associated with them. In this paper, I analyse the relation between the research instruments and the respective teaching demonstrations. In doing so, I particularly distinguish between demonstrations that address the process of the actual experimental procedures, and those that focus on the outcome or results (the product) of the experiment. This distinction will be illustrated in some exemplary case studies from the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth in which both the historical experiment and the related educational devices are analysed. The tension between the historical experiment on the one hand, and the different variants of the teaching version on the other, result in the educational as well as epistemological problems that are discussed in this paper.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , September 2023 , pp. 351 - 368
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of British Society for the History of Science
References
1 There are few examples in the history where instruments crossed the boundary in both directions or were used simultaneously both in teaching and in research. One example in this respect is the cloud chamber. See Bertozzi, Eugenio, ‘Technology-embedding instruments and performative goals: the case of the fully-automatized cloud chamber by the Officine Galileo in Florence’, Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society (2016) 129, pp. 34–42Google Scholar; and Bertozzi, Eugenio, ‘“Seeing with one's own eyes” and speaking to the mind: a history of the Wilson Cloud Chamber in the teaching of physics’, BJHS (2021) 54(2), pp. 177–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Fleck, Ludwik, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (tr. Bradley, Fred and Trenn, Thaddeus J.), Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005, p. 104Google Scholar.
3 The label ‘canonical’ for the educational discussion of some historical experiments can be seen in correspondence to Olesko's use of the term with respect to textbooks. See Olesko, Kathryn M., ‘The foundations of a canon: Kohlrausch's Practical physics’, in Kaiser, David (ed.), Pedagogy and the Practice of Science, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005, pp. 323–56Google Scholar. Canonical experiments have this status for longer periods of time; some of them are still present in modern lectures. However, the respective representations are changing over time.
4 For examples on the modern use of respective teaching devices see e.g. Lauginie, Pierre, ‘Weighing the earth, weighing the worlds: from Cavendish to modern undergraduate demonstrations’, in Heering, Peter and Osewold, Daniel (eds.), Constructing Scientific Understanding through Contextual Teaching, Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2007, pp. 119–48Google Scholar; Müller-Hill, Christoph and Heering, Peter, ‘Control and stabilization: making Millikan's oil drop experiment work’, European Journal of Physics (2011) 32(5), pp. 1285–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rapior, Gerald, Sengstock, Klaus and Baev, Valery, ‘New features of the Franck–Hertz experiment’, American Journal of Physics (2006) 74(5), pp. 423–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Teaching versions of the ice calorimeter can be found at the Historische Sammlung der Fakultät für Physik, University of Vienna (see https://bibliothek.univie.ac.at/sammlungen/objekt_des_monats/003891.html, last accessed 22 October 2022), and were marketed e.g. by Ferdinand Ernecke (see Ferdinand Ernecke, Physikalische Apparate Preisliste No. 18, Berlin (190?), pp. 196 f., at www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/trade-literature/scientific-instruments/files/51667, last accessed 22 October 2022) or Max Kohl (see Max Kohl, Physikalische Apparate, Preisliste Nr. 21, Chemnitz (190?), p. 506, at www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/trade-literature/scientific-instruments/files/51636, last accessed 22 October 2022). Educational examples with respect to Joule's experiment will be discussed in detail in this paper. Historical teaching versions of the Coulomb torsion balance are found at several collections, among them the ones at the Deutsches Museum München, the Technisches Museum Vienna, or the Museum of the History of Physics Padova; modern versions can be found e.g. at PASCO, www.pasco.com/products/lab-apparatus/fundamental-constants/es-9070 (last accessed 22 October 2022), or Leybold, www.ld-didactic.de/phk/gruppen.asp?PT=VP3.1.2.1&L=2 (last accessed 22 October 2022).
5 Roland Wittje demonstrated that, in the interwar period, Robert Wichard Pohl and his educational system established new standards in science teaching. See Wittje, Roland, ‘“Simplex Sigillum Veri”: Robert Pohl and demonstration experiments in physics after the Great War’, in Heering, Peter and Wittje, Roland (eds.), Learning by Doing: Experiments and Instruments in the History of Science Teaching, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2011, pp. 317–48Google Scholar. With respect to the discussion in this paper, it is relevant that historical experiments hardly played any role in Pohl's teaching; this is also evident from his textbooks. See e.g. Pohl, Robert Wichard, Einführung in die Elektrizitätslehre, 1st edn, Berlin: Julius Springer, 1927Google Scholar; Pohl, Einführung in die Mechanik und Akustik, 1st edn, Berlin: Julius Springer, 1930; Pohl, Einführung in die Physik 1: Mechanik, Akustik und Wärmelehre, 7th edn, Berlin: Springer, 1944. The change in teaching physics is not limited to Pohl's approach; other aspects were also relevant. Turner states, ‘Between 1880 and 1920 the way science was taught in American High Schools changed dramatically. The old “lecture/demonstration” method, where information was presented to essentially passive students, was replaced by the “laboratory” method’. Turner, Steven C., ‘Changing images of the inclined plane: a case study of a revolution in American science education’, Science & Education (2012) 21(2), pp. 245–70, 245CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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8 Millikan, Robert Andrews, ‘The isolation of an ion, a precision measurement of its charge, and the correction of Stokes's Law’, Physical Review Series I (1911) 32(4), pp. 349–97, 360Google Scholar. Other key publications with respect to the development of the experiment were Fletcher, Harvey, ‘A verification of the theory of Brownian movements and a direct determination of the value of ne for gaseous ionization’, Physical Review (1911) 33(2), pp. 81–110Google Scholar; Millikan, Robert Andrews, ‘On the elementary electrical charge and the Avogadro constant’, Physical Review 2/2 (1913), pp. 109–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Millikan, The Electron: Its Isolation and Measurement and the Determination of Some of Its Properties, London and Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1917. For a detailed discussion of the instrumental development in the oil drop experiment see Panusch, Martin, ‘Millikan's vessels’, Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society (2012) 113, pp. 32–7Google Scholar.
9 The relevance of skills and tacit knowledge have been discussed in detail by Collins: ‘Experimental ability has the character of a skill that can be acquired and developed with practice. Like a skill, it cannot be fully explicated or absolutely established’. Harry M. Collins, Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice, London and Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1985, p. 73. In this context, Collins also discusses the experimenter's regress.
10 Peter Heering, ‘Tools for investigation, tools for instruction: potential transformations of instruments in the transfer from research to teaching’, in Heering and Wittje, op. cit. (5), pp. 15–30.
11 Apart from these options, I also discussed examples (particularly for the eighteenth century) where instruments were used in both research and teaching. For one prominent example from the twentieth century see Bertozzi, op. cit. (1).
12 Joule, James Prescott, ‘On the mechanical equivalent of heat’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1850) 140, pp. 61–82Google Scholar.
13 John Tyndall, Heat Considered as a Mode of Motion, Being a Course of Twelve Lectures Delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in … 1862, by John Tyndall, London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green, 1863, p. 72. Tyndall's observation corresponds to the stabilization process, and thus can be seen in the context of the experimenter's regress.
14 On the analysis of Joule's experimental practice with respect to the paddle wheel experiment see in particular Heinz Otto Sibum, ‘Reworking the mechanical value of heat: instruments of precision and gestures of accuracy in early Victorian England’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science (1995) 26, pp. 73–106. Additionally see Sibum, , ‘Les gestes de la mesure: Joule, les pratiques de la brasserie et la science’, Annales: Histoire, sciences sociales (1998) 53(4–5), pp. 745–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Young, John, ‘Heat, work and subtle fluids: a commentary on Joule (1850) “On the mechanical equivalent of heat”’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences (2015) 373(2039), 20140348, doi: 10.1098/rsta.2014.0348Google Scholar.
15 The instrument can be found in e.g. Max Kohl A.G., Physikalische Apparate Preisliste Nr.50 Band II und III, Chemnitz (n.d. but published in 1911), p. 628 (item no. 55232A), at www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollections/trade-literature/scientific-instruments/files/51634 (last accessed 22 October 2022). On the status of the company Max Kohl in the production of teaching instruments in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth see Brenni, Paolo, ‘The evolution of teaching instruments and their use between 1800 and 1930’, Science & Education (2012) 21(2), pp. 191–226CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the decline of the company due to (among other aspects) changing demands on teaching instruments see in particular Wittje, op. cit. (5).
16 For an education video showing the reconstruction of Joule's paddle wheel in action see https://youtu.be/MBrTDKc9YZ0; for Paolo Brenni's demonstration of the educational version see https://youtu.be/PThq8fJpCLw (both last accessed 22 October 2022). It should be noted that Paolo Brenni provided a significant number of videos showing the actual use of instruments kept at the Fondazione Scienza e Technica, Florence. On the process of making these videos and particularly on the intended use see Paolo Brenni, ‘Filming nineteenth century physics demonstrations with historical instruments’, in Elizabeth Cavicchi and Peter Heering (eds.), Historical Scientific Instruments in Contemporary Education, Leiden: Brill 2022, pp. 34–49.
17 Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 4. Texts were not the only way produced knowledge was communicated; as Golinski also points out (op. cit., p. 8), ‘The rhetoric of both demonstrations and texts was aimed at diffusing factual knowledge among as wide an audience as possible by allowing them to witness, or if possible to replicate, experimental findings’.
18 Puluj, Johann, ‘Ueber einen Schulapparat zur Bestimmung des mechanischen Wärmeaequivalentes’, Annalen der Physik und Chemie (1876) 233, pp. 437–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 This video can be accessed at https://youtu.be/7gZ4VqUCi6I (last accessed 22 October 2022).
20 Puluj, op. cit. (18), p. 446.
21 Hugh Longbourne Callendar, ‘Improvements in apparatus for measuring the mechanical equivalent of heat’, Patent GB190213377 (A) – 1903-06-11, at https://worldwide.espacenet.com/data/espacenetDocument.pdf?ND=4&flavour=trueFull&locale=en_EP&FT=D&date=19030611&CC=GB&NR=190213377A&KC=A&popup=true (last accessed 22 October 2022).
22 Callendar's device was initially marketed by the Cambridge Instrument Society. See Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company, Callendar's Apparatus for Measuring the Mechanical Equivalent of Heat, Cambridge, 19??, at www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollections/trade-literature/scientific-instruments/files/51711 (accessed 22 October 2022). The flyer states that the company is the sole maker; however, Max Kohl A.G. had a similar instrument in the fiftieth Preisliste. Kohl, op. cit. (15), p. 628.
23 There are, of course, other proposals for how to demonstrate the mechanical equivalent of heat in a lecture. See e.g. Grimsehl, Ernst, ‘Demonstrationsapparat zur Bestimmung des mechanischen Wärmeäquivalentes’, Zeitschrift für den physikalischen und chemischen Unterricht (1903) 16, pp. 290–2Google Scholar; Hespe, W., ‘Ein Apparat zur Bestimmung des mechanischen Wärmeäquivalents durch Reibung’, Zeitschrift für den physikalischen und chemischen Unterricht (1904) 17, pp. 334–9Google Scholar.
24 For a detailed discussion of the demonstration see Ruben Holländer, ‚Historische Lehrversuche zum mechanischen Wärmeäquivalent: Historische, materielle und performative Aspekte‘, unpublished MA thesis, Europa-Universität Flensburg, 2020.
25 Kohl, op. cit. (15), p. 629. Remarkably, this is exactly what the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company stated in their manual.
26 Shapiro emphasized that textbooks have great authority in science education; the same is certainly true with respect to teaching demonstrations, see Shapiro, Adam R., ‘Between training and popularization: regulating science textbooks in secondary education’, ISIS (2012) 103, pp. 99–110CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
27 Conversations-Lexikon Allgemeine deutsche Real-Encyklopädie für die gebildeten Stände, 9th edn, 15 vols., Leipzig: F.U. Brockhaus 1847, vol. 14 (Sueven–Viterbo), p. 700: ‘heißt in der Naturwissenschaft jede Beobachtung, welche unter Bedingungen angestellt wird, die man selbst erst absichtlich angeordnet hat, um gewissen Einwirkungen auszuschließen, andere zuzufügen und dadurch die Natur über das Wesentliche und Unwesentliche einer Erscheinung zu Antworten gleichsam zu zwingen’. I am indebted to Linnéa Bergsträsser, who informed me about this quote. Similarly, Chwolson pointed out in his textbook that ‘through observation, one eavesdrops, through experiment one interrogates nature’. O.D. Chwolson, Lehrbuch der Physik (tr. H. Pflaum), vol. 1, Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1902, 3.
28 Friedrich Kohlrausch, ‘Vorwort zur 11. Auflage’ (1910), in Kohlrausch, Lehrbuch der praktischen Physik, 14th edn, Leipzig and Berlin: B.G. Teubner 1923, pp. iii–v, iii. On the development and educational background as well as on the canonical status of Kohlrausch's book see Olesko, op. cit. (3)
29 Londa Schiebinger, ‘The philosopher's beard: women and gender in science’, in Roy Porter (ed.), The Cambridge History of Science: Eighteenth-Century Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003, pp. 184–210, 193. Schiebinger refers to Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983.
30 In this respect, this can be seen as another example of Watts's observation: ‘Exploring the history of science in these ways has demonstrated how it has often been underpinned by both deeply embedded gendered associations in its very language and practice and assumptions that the control sought by rational knowledge over natural forces can be equated with “masculine” dominating “feminine”’. Watts, Ruth, ‘Whose knowledge? Gender, education, science and history’, History of Education (2007) 36(3), pp. 283–302, 286CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 Cavendish did not intend to determine the gravitational constant but aimed at measuring the density of the Earth. See Clotfelter, Beryl E., ‘The Cavendish experiment as Cavendish knew it’, American Journal of Physics (1987) 55, pp. 210–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Coulomb established only the force–distance relation experimentally (and added the product of the charges due to conceptual reasons), but did not publish an equation. See Charles Augustin Coulomb, ‘Premier mémoir sur l’électricité et le magnétisme’, Mémoires de l'Academie royale des sciences pour l'année 1785, 1788, pp. 569–77; Coulomb, ‘Sur l’électricité et le magnétisme, deuxième memoir’, Mémoires de l'Academie royale des sciences pour l'année 1785, 1788, pp. 578–611.
32 It should be noted that the Max Kohl A.G. provided all the instruments discussed in the context of teaching the mechanical equivalent of heat, plus some more. see Kohl, op. cit. (15), pp. 627–9. Several versions of Puluj's apparatus can be found (Kohl, op. cit. (15), p. 627, items 52050, 52051, and 55226) as well as Callendar's device (with an electric motor: Kohl, op. cit. (15), p. 629, item 55230.).
33 Paul Louis Simon, ‘Auszug aus einem Schreiben … an den Professor Gilbert in Halle’, Annalen der Physik (1807) 27, pp. 325–7, 327.
34 Georg Simon Ohm, ‘Bestimmung des Gesetzes, nach welchem Metalle die Kontakt-Elektrizität leiten, nebst einem Entwurfe zu einer Theorie des Voltaschen Apparates und des Schweiggerschen Multiplikators’, Journal für Chemie und Physik (1826) 44, pp. 137–66. According to Ohm, these balances were transferred from Straßburg to Cologne; most likely they were part of the collection of Jacob Ludwig Schürer and were transferred to Cologne by Christian Kramp in 1799. See Quarg, Gunter, ‘Das physikalische Kabinett und der Physik-Unterricht in Köln’, Jahrbuch des Kölnischen Geschichtsvereins (1994) 65(1), pp. 113–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35 I am indebted to Roland Wittje, who made me aware of this instrument and its use in teaching as well as enabled me to examine the still-existing device. For a more thorough discussion of this instrument see Heering, op. cit. (10).
36 Teaching representations like these two are not limited to canonical experiments; another example is a bimetallic spiral thermometer: ‘The object in the Playfair Collection has the basic appearance of a spiral bimetallic thermometer though it could not function as one as the metal spiral is constructed from a single metal, brass … it may have been intended for showing to a large class.’ R.G.W. Anderson, The Playfair Collection and the Teaching of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh 1713–1858, Edinburgh: The Royal Scottish Museum, 1978, p. 85. I am indebted to Louis Volkmer, who pointed me towards this example.
37 A description of the torsion balance (Schürholz design) can be found at www.ld-didactic.de/documents/en-US/GA/GA/5/516/51601defs.pdf (last accessed 7 February 2023); a slightly different design can be found at www.conatex.com/catalog/physik_lehrmittel/fundamentale_konstanten/gravitation_coulomb_sches_gesetz_lichtgeschwindigkeit/product-torsionsdrehwaage_zum_nachweis_des_coulomb_schen_gesetzes/sku-1041409 (last accessed 7 February 2023). The intended use of the first instrument for ‘[c]onfirming Coulomb's Law – Measuring with the torsion balance, Schürholz design’ can be found at www.ld-didactic.de/documents/en-US/EXP/P/P3/P3121_e.pdf (last accessed 7 February 2023).
38 On Coulomb's research programme see Heering, Peter, ‘Styles of experimentation and the attempts to establish the lightning rod in pre-Revolutionary Paris’, in Heering, Peter, Hochadel, Oliver and Rhees, David (eds.), Playing with Fire: Histories of the Lightning Rod, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2009, pp. 121–43Google Scholar.
39 This stabilization of the demonstrator's behaviour is not to be confused with the experimenter's regress; in educational demonstrations, no new knowledge is produced but established knowledge is demonstrated and transferred.
40 Daston, Lorraine and Sibum, H. Otto, ‘Introduction: scientific personae and their histories’, Science in Context (2006) 16, pp. 1–8, 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My discussion of the historical construction of scientific personae is also triggered by recent studies in science education. See e.g. Aavramidou, Lucy, ‘Science identity as a landscape of becoming: rethinking recognition and emotions through an intersectionality lens’, Cultural Studies of Science Education (2020) 15, pp. 323–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.