Students' Understanding of the Special Theory of Relativity and Design for a Guided Visit to a Science Museum

2009

International audience; This paper describes the design of teaching materials that are used as learning tools in school visits to a science museum. An exhibition on the A century of the Special Theory of Relativity, in the Kutxaespacio Science Museum, in San Sebastian (Spain), was used to design a visit for first year engineering students at the university and assess the learning which was achieved. The first part of the paper presents the teaching sequence which was designed to build a bridge between formal teaching and the exhibition visit. The second part analyses the potential of the exhibition and the aforementioned teaching sequence to influence the students' knowledge of three aspect…