ARC Study for Teaching & Learning about Pendulum Motion

The Australian Research Council has provided funds for a three-year study of the effect of historically, philosophically and culturally informed teaching of pendulum motion topics in New South Wales. All Primary and Secondary teachers are invited to participate.

The study is being coordinated by A/Professor Michael R. Matthews, School of Education, University of New South Wales.

The study will examine the impact of such teaching on student and teacher knowledge of science and of the nature of science. It will also investigate the extent to which cross-disciplinary teaching of pendulum topics can be facilitated.

The pendulum is ideally suited to be a vehicle for the teaching of physics, scientific method, and for teaching about the nature of science and the interrelationship of science, technology and society.

These three goals can be pursued from the earliest grades through to the end of high school, and even beyond. The pendulum is tangible, simple, readily available, and yet its behaviour embodies a great deal of rich physics and manifests fundamental scientific laws. The utilisation of the pendulum in timekeeping - and hence in navigation, cartography, exploration and commerce - was an important element in the social and economic history of Europe.

The pendulum played a central role in the development of Western science. It was crucial in the establishment of Galileo's new science, and it had a central place in Newton's physics, with the historian Richard Westfall remarking that 'without the pendulum, there would be no Principia'. The pendulum subsequently played an important part in the development of classical mechanics through the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Foucault's pendulum, as well as providing dynamical evidence for the rotation of the earth, also played a role in the popularisation of science in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pendulum measurements enabled the shape of the earth to be determined, and were pivotal for the science of geodesy

As well as addressing specific outcomes concerning the pendulum in the New South Wales Stage 4/5 (outcome 4.6 optional) and Stage 6 HSC (Physics Module 9.2) Science courses, the project aims to assist secondary school teachers in choosing contexts in which cross-disciplinary application of pendulum studies can incorporate a number of Prescribed Focus Areas. For K-6