Pendulum Project

Can the pendulum enhance science education and literacy? That’s the aim of the International Pendulum Project, launched this year by Michael Matthews, an education professor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia.

The project focuses on using different aspects of the pendulum in developing curricula for all levels of science, math, technology, history, music, literature, and the interconnections among these fields. The project has initial funding of $30 000 a year for three years from the Australian Research Council.

The pendulum project grew from Matthews’s book, Time for Science Education: How Teaching the History and Philosophy of Pendulum Motion Can Contribute to Science Literacy (Kluwer Academic/Plenum, 2000). In the 17th century, Matthews writes, pendulums transformed the precision of marking time, which in turn transformed not only measurements in mechanics and astronomy, but also in navigation, mapping, work, religion, and social customs. On finishing the book, says Matthews, “I realized that it was just an introduction to the wider and deeper fields of pendulum study.”

Among the project’s planned activities are teacher-development workshops, a special pendulum issue of the journal Science & Education in 2004, and a pendulum conference this October at UNSW. For more information about the project, visit http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/pendulum/ or e-mail Matthews at m.matthews@unsw.edu.au .