Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to describe how science and technology are used in occupations, including skilled trades, to solve real problems, and to analyse what various communities have contributed to science and technology. The museum offers only two examples from the medieval Muslim world, an engineer and a scholar of optics; your class must bring occupations and communities from elsewhere, including its own. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- A3.1 describe practical applications of science and technology concepts in various occupations, including skilled trades, and how these applications address real-world problems
- A3.3 analyse contributions to science and technology from various communities
2 Before you start
A thought to carry into the lesson.
3 The lesson
What problem was this person trying to solve?
The expectations ask for an occupation, the science or technology used in it, and the real problem it addresses. For each person you read about, write down the problem, the tool or idea that was used, and who gained from it.
Go deeper
Al-Jazari was an engineer in the service of the Artuqids at Amid, and he wrote a book of devices commissioned by Nasir al-Din Mahmud 2. One of its six divisions is for water-raising machines 2. Ibn al-Haytham went to Egypt and tried to regulate the flow of the Nile. He gave up the task when he realised it was impossible 3. Afterwards he earned his living in Cairo by copying scientific manuscripts 3.
Think about it
Ibn al-Haytham gave up the Nile task when he realised it could not be done. Is giving up on a problem that cannot be solved a failure in science, or part of doing science well, and why?
Into the museum
- Al-Jazari: the engineer, his patron and the six divisions of his book.
- Ibn al-Haytham: the scholar of optics, his Nile task and his work as a copyist.
- Ibn al-Haytham's dark room: one of his experiments with light, set out step by step.
Try this
Read about Al-Jazari and Ibn al-Haytham. For each, write one sentence naming the problem they worked on and one naming what they made or wrote.
4 Carry it further
Where this lesson leads in the museum.
5 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Al-Jazari, Ismail ibn al-Razzaz have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
An engineer at a royal court. Al-Jazari was an engineer who wrote a book on mechanical devices. TDV records that he served the Artuqids at Amid between 1181 and 1206 and that his book was commissioned by Nasir al-Din Mahmud. Its six divisions cover clocks, vessels for drinking and banquets, vessels for hand washing, fountains and automatic musical instruments, water-raising machines and miscellaneous devices. What problem would each kind of device solve for the people who used it?
In your own words: what does Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
A book on light that mattered. Ibn al-Haytham was an Arab mathematician and physicist. The editor of the Kitab al-Manazir, the Book of Optics, calls it the principal optical work of the Islamic world, places him in the fifth century AH and judges it the most valuable thing Arab scholars produced in physics. The museum also records his dark-room test of how light travels. Whose contributions to science does your own class know, and where would you find them?
I can now