Invented in ancient Egypt, the plane astrolabe is a tool used by astronomers and navigators to determine time and identifying positions of the Sun, Moon, stars, and planets. Read text or view the video to understand the details of its...

An article discussing the tools the Islamic civilization astronomers developed and used to study the stars. Also discussed are the tools used in alchemy and metalworking.

Medieval and Renaissance-era scientific instruments are catalogued and displayed. Find references to the makers of the instruments and the ways the tools were once used.

In the school courtyard, students will measure the apparent path of the sun across the sky using a toilet plunger. Students will then generate questions as to why the sun appears to move, and what is really happening in the process. We...

Sailors improved on many of the tools used in navigation to help them in their long journeys across an ocean. On this site from the Mariners' Museum, find many of these tools, perhaps in use already in the 15th century, but made even...

This is an ongoing activity where students take monthly temperature measurements, and make observations of the weather and changes in the environment, at the same location in the schoolyard each time. They will make and use an astrolabe,...