Educational Activities on General Studies triggered by the Ancient Chinese Astronomy Exhibition
YIP Chee-kuen
Chief Curator(Science)
Hong Kong Science Museum
Email: ckyip@lcsd.gov.hk
When I was working on creating new exhibits and educational activities, I like to borrow ideas from historical items. Many modern day equipments need computer processor to operate, however most of the scientific principles were hidden behind the "black box" that primary students would have difficulties to comprehend. On the contrary ancient instruments were designed on the basic. The Ancient Chinese Astronomy Exhibition provides very good examples.
Most of us know how to identify direction. Normally a compass is needed. But how about when we are lost in an unfamiliar place such as a wilderness with no instrument on hand? Although we can use the rising and setting position of the Sun to learn where is east and west, our ancestors knew long ago that this would not be accurate enough. The direction of sunrise is northeasterly in summer and southeasterly in winter. Some clever ancestors found that to determine direction with good accuracy, all they needed were just a rod, a rope and a marker. A set of outdoor experimental activities designed along this line would help the students to understand the movement of the Sun with respect to that of the Earth. They would further be able to learn how to measure the time of a day, the length of a year, and the time of the seasons etc.
Ancient stone carvings may also be used to teach not just history or arts but also science. A stone carving in the exhibition called "Xihe holding the Sun and Changxi holding the Moon" is a very good example. It illustrates an ancient Chinese legend that the Sun was one of the ten sons of Xihe and the Moon was one of the twelve daughters of Changxi. The Sun was depicted as a circular disk with a crow inside and the Moon was another disk with a toad. An activity will lead the students to understand that our ancestors had witnessed the sunspots that they had taken as the crow. For the toad on the Moon, we now know that it is composed of regions of low lunar area known as the "seas" or "oceans".
Instruments on time measurement in ancient China can also be served to illustrate the science behind. It had been known that a dripping bag of water could be used to show time. It was later developed into a clepsydra. However a clepsydra with a single vessel suffers a drawback: the same time intervals between starting and ending time to be marked on a floating calibration rod would not be of the same length. Ancient Chinese had spent lots of effort to improve the timing devices resulting in multi-stage clepsydras and other instruments. Understanding the details is again another interesting scientific investigation for students.
Attached with this article are four examples to demonstrate the ideas mentioned. Additional information related with ancient Chinese astronomy can be found in the web pages of the Hong Kong Science Museum and the Hong Kong Space Museum.
[Exemplars on teaching activities for primary general studies subject (in Chinese)]
[Full Text in Chinese]
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