Who helped build science and technology?

This lesson asks you to analyse what different communities have contributed to science and technology. The museum offers three examples from the medieval Muslim world: an experiment on light, a way of writing numbers and a pump turned by water. Contributions from other communities your class must bring from elsewhere. ¹

For each example, look at what was already known and at what was added. The records themselves say these were improvements within older traditions, so look for the words that show what was new.

Al-Khwarizmi wrote a book in Baghdad on algorism, counting with the Indian numerals. Through it, the record says, the Indian numerals and the decimal system entered the Islamic world ². The record offers a modern example of place value: the two represents two hundred and the eight represents eight units, while zero occupies the tens place in 208 ². It also says he did not invent the numerals; he transmitted them and taught reckoning with them ². His Arabic book is lost, but a twelfth-century Latin translation survives ².

Al-Khwarizmi did not invent the numerals; he carried them and taught people how to count with them. Does a person who teaches an idea to many people help science as much as the person who first thought of it, and why?

• Algorism: how numbers are written and worked by place, and where the word algorithm comes from.
• Ibn al-Haytham's dark room: how a familiar sight, light through a hole, became a test that can be repeated.
• al-Jazari's double-piston pump: a pump driven by flowing water, and the model that helps explain it.

Choose one of the three records: Ibn al-Haytham's dark room, Algorism or al-Jazari's pump. Draw a line and mark on it what was already known and what the record says was added.