Session Chair: Peter Heering (Europa-Universität Flensburg, Germany)
Islamic Scientific Instruments: a ‘meeting point’ of science, faith, art and culture
Author: Nicola Bird
Co-Author: Silke Ackerman
Scientific instruments from the Islamic world form a significant part of the extensive collections at the History of Science Museum (HSM), and provide an inspiring springboard for inclusive public engagement fostering intercultural dialogue and learning. Since 2017, MultakaOxford, a multi-award-winning inclusive volunteering programme based at HSM, has championed collaborative practice to bring diverse representation and narratives to science, history, culture, and faith, enriching our understanding of contemporary society.
In this paper the presenters share the learnings on its collaborative approaches and how this contributes to the museum's ambitious transformation 'Vision 2024'.
The paper will present a case study highlighting the role of scientific instruments in engaging young people and public audiences in celebrating Islamic art for the inaugural UNESCO International Day of Islamic Art (November 2023). Through a series of workshops based on geometry and drawing instruments facilitated by the museum and Oxford-based Iraqi artist Lana Al Sham, the museum connected young people at Oxford’s Sudanese Saturday School and Al Sham Academy with science, faith and culture.
The case study culminates in a public museum event Patterns in the Sky which was co-planned and co-delivered with Multaka volunteers. This inclusive family event connected Islamic scientific instruments, such as the astrolabe that belonged to Shah Abbas II, and inspired visitors with object-based activities including scientific instrument handling, interactive digital mapping, calligraphy workshops, geometric collage activities, and art workshops. The event included a display of the work created by the cultural schools displayed in the form of a mahreb.
The presentation seeks to engage dialogue and reflections on different approaches and their learnings in engagement with scientific instruments through art, culture and faith.
The Moon Bites the Sun: Learners’ explorations with Mesoamerican Mirrors, Sunlight, and Solar Eclipse
Author: Elizabeth Cavicchi
Co-Authors: Isis María Cota-Martínez; Marvelin Higgenbottom; Parimala Rajesh
How do today’s learners discover the Sun directly, its energy, changes and light, and relate to peoples who experienced it as Earth’s lamp of day? For ancient Mesoamericans, Sun was deity; it made Day. When eclipsed, people feared. Redirecting Sun or other light, mirrors figured centrally in Mesoamerican culture. Crafted from stone with immense labor and precision polishing, some Mesoamerican mirrors survive, including at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnography. During collection workshops, curators Emily Rose and James Walkingstick engage us and MIT students with these, among other mystery objects. What do you notice? What materials? How made and used? We observe, marvel, immerse ourselves in objects’ past. At MIT’s Edgerton Center, and outdoors, students explore with glass mirrors, lenses, Sunlight. What will students explore, notice, try? These explorations are open-ended, unconstrained by answers. Taking a magnifier, while viewing grass – a bright spot appears. What’s that? Reorienting the magnifier intensifies it. Surprise! Smoke! Will it burn Wood!?! Curiosity drives students’ precision in positioning lens and wood. Excitement and coordination builds. Miniaturizing French 1774 experiments, a student’s lens scorches diamond dust! Photographed crescents cast by Mexican trees during October 14, 2023’s solar eclipse ignite student wonder and experimenting. April 8, 2024 brings solar eclipse from Mexico to Canada. We report impromptu and facilitated experiences in and out of totality, by instrumental methods ranging from hole projection to filters to telescopic imaging. For everyone – children, MIT students, public, amateurs – the Moon biting the Sun is as awesome as for ancient Mesoamericans.
Affiliations: MIT Edgerton Center; Centro de Investigación en Materiales Avanzados S.C. (CIMAV), Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico; MIT Edgerton Center; undergraduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Co-author Bio notes:
My name is Isis María Cota-Martínez, currently, I’m studying a Ph.D. in Material Science. I was born in Nogales, Mexico on January 13, 1994. My first approach to sky observation was at the age of 7 during a night walk with my dad, since then I’ve been passionate about Science.
Eclipses were tremendous events during Marvelin Higginbottom’s childhood in the Exotic Lands of Honduras. Mother confined her indoors, away from staring at the Sun! Fashion designing is her thing! MIT Edgerton Center Administrative Assistant, Marvelin leads MIT’s eclipse event “Watch the Moon Bite the Sun”, becoming the Latin Female Galileo!
MIT undergraduate Parimala Rajesh studies aeroastro and astronomy, codes with MIT’s Solar Electric Vehicle team, and explores campus tunnels. Her unbounded curiosity ranges from underground caves, to how planes fly, to the distant universe, and everywhere between.
Roues dentées et engrenages, nombres et opérations : allers et retours/ From cogwheels and gears to numbers and operations, and back
Auteur: Frédérique Plantevin
Mechanical calculating instruments can be studied from technological, historical and mathematical points of view. Together with a small group of primary and secondary mathematics and technology teachers, we developed and tested activities that exploit these three perspectives. First designed for students aged 10 to 13, they have subsequently led to teacher training courses; they were also partly tested with the public during the free tours of the Cabinet of Curiosity.
The sequence is based on the observation of a “Lightning calculator” adder and an Odhner type “Brunsviga 20” multiplier. The study of their characteristics shows some of the subtleties of the history of calculating instruments. But the crucial stage of the activity is the physical creation of a working prototype adder with a rudimentary kit provided (cogwheels, nails and support, graduation aid, stylus). To meet its specifications (add two three-digit numbers with automatic carryover) precise but with no indication other than the observation of the "Lightning calculator", it is necessary to closely link technological and mathematical issues. This leads to a concrete understanding of the operating principle of more advanced mechanical arithmetic machines (multipliers) which in turn, sheds new light on the mathematical operations they perform. This back-and-forth between instruments and the mathematical concepts they represent is an essential aim of this activity.
All these aspects will be presented succinctly but very concretely, with supporting examples and productions, leading hopefully to a fruitful exchange with the audience.
