Speaker
Description
This contribution presents two case studies where secondary-school students engaged with scientific and technological heritage. The initiative falls within the project Va3SCoDi - Valorizzazione degli Strumenti Scientifici Storici per la Conoscenza e la Didattica - at the Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry, University of Pisa. The project focuses on the study, documentation, cataloguing, and educational use of historical scientific instruments.
The first case concerns the historical physics cabinet of the Liceo Classico Parini in Milan, restored in the year 2000 with the support of ARASS Brera. At the initiative of Renzo Traversini, a third-year class was guided through a non-invasive analysis aimed at identifying, describing, and understanding instruments related to the physics curriculum. The activity drew on ICCD criteria for scientific and technological heritage, and on artefact-study models such as those of Gessner and Winterthur.
The second case took place at the Museum of Natural History in Rosignano, MuSNa, a partner of Va3SCoDi, with students from two schools in Livorno province: the Enrico Mattei Applied Sciences High School and the Enrico Fermi Scientific High School. Collection objects introduced themes in the history of physics and chemistry, subsequently developed through the reconstruction of a voltaic pile and a spectroscope using ordinary materials.
The contribution advances the view that historical scientific instruments may mediate between scientific learning, material culture, and the ethics of conservation. Contextualised, such instruments allow students to approach science not merely as abstract knowledge, but as a historically situated practice embodied in unique, fragile objects of cultural value.