Make-Keep-Use: Bringing Historical Instruments into the Classroom

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. Whilst the initial instruments were built according to source information, the students can modify materials, dimensions etc. in order to come up with a device that is their individual representation of the initial device. In working on their own version of the instrument, the students shall be enabled to understand that instruments were built on purpose by skilled craftsmen. Thus, they are enabled to understand that science is not merely done by geniuses, but also skilled workers are crucial to scientific practices. Moreover, through this approach the institution has its own version of the instrument that can be used in future science teaching. In this paper, the approach and its conceptual background will be described; its realization and first experiences will be discussed.