This paper discusses the variety of ways in which The Bakken Museum has made use of replicas or simulations of historical instruments and experiments and demonstrations in education programs and exhibits for school children, families with children, and other museum audiences. Early efforts were stimulated in the mid-1980s by a collaboration with…

Gravity affects everything we do. Only in very recent years have we been able to carry out experiments in orbit around the Earth and see for the first time how things behave in its absence. This has allowed us to understand fundamental processes better and to design new materials using this knowledge. (Contains 6 figures.)

Educational versions of Millikan's oil-drop experiment have frequently been criticized; suggestions for improvement either focus on technical innovations of the setup or on replacing the experiment by other approaches of familiarization, such as computer simulations. In our approach, we have analysed experimental procedures. In doing so, we were…

Reviews the Hafele-Keating experiment on relativistic changes in eastward and westward moving cesium atomic clocks. Recommends the use of the Sagnac effect to remove the east-west time asymmetry and of the general-relativistic effect to elucidate the clock-rate changes. (CC)

Plant tropisms--their directional movement in response to stimuli--are a fundamental concept in plant science and excite students because they are the observable signs of life in plants. Unfortunately, the precollege teaching literature is full of tropism misconceptions. An inexpensive clock clinostat is invaluable for student gravitropism and…