Search

Science museums have demonstrated over time, and through various academic researches, to be a favorable environment to awaken the desire to learn more about scientific content, bringing visitors closer to artifacts and concepts in a different way than any other media can offer. In this research, we investigate how the public interacts with the exhibition in one of the three interactive rooms at Museo Galileo. This study was divided into two parts: the first is a non-participative observational phase, analyzing the visitors' participation with the exhibition's models. In this step, we collected data from 208 people. From these data, it was possible to understand the need to study further two teaching models that did not allow interaction: the models that presented Eudoxus' System and Ptolemy's System. The second phase was constituted of interviews involving 22 visitors, analyzing the models' understanding and proposing an improvement in light of ergonomic interaction design. This study serves as a reflection for those who intend to develop scientific models or contemplate designing exhibitions.

In this article, we analyze images from the book "Our Friend the Atom," written by the astrophysicist Heinz Haber in 1957 and developed in the Disney Science Department. In addition to analyzing the work, we investigate its relevance for science education. After the US attack on two Japanese cities with atomic bombs, there was a severance of opinions on nuclear technologies. On one side, it had an association with the destruction arising from the war. On the other, a narrative highlighted the advantages of using nuclear power for developments that would benefit humanity. Haber and Disney's book aim to explain how such power works and supports its use for the good, despite the danger of destruction. Our goal is to contextualize the book's content and its visual imagery and identify aspects to contribute to the science curriculum. We summarized the historical elements of the post-war period and Walt Disney's entertainment approach and political stance. We discuss how it made a dialogue between a scientific concept and the general public through the book. For the matter of this article, we chose to examine one of the figures in the book, which represents through an illustration how chain reactions work to generate atomic power. For such, we followed a four-step methodology proposed by Silva and Neves "Em Aberto," 31(103). (2018) to achieve an imagery analysis, giving us an understanding of the visual language contained in the book. It considers its visual choices, as shapes and colors, content, relations that involve the image, and interpretation of the picture as a whole by the reader. We came to understand the book's importance as scientific literacy was achieved through its illustrations, text, and popularity.