• Journal of Science Education
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.80-90
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to investigate manual skills of experimental apparatuses of pre-service elementary school teachers by examining and analyzing the process of experiments conducted by pre-teachers. For this study, 24 pre-service elementary school teachers were selected as the subjects and 4 experimental apparatuses were chosen through analyzing science textbooks from 3rd grade to 6th grade in elementary school. The selected experimental apparatuses were alcohol burner, dropper, microscope, instruments for making a prepared specimen. In addition, a task was carefully chosen to conduct an investigation in real settings and a series of evaluation standards was developed. While 3 subjects conducted experiments in separated and independent space at the same time, 3 collaborators observed the experiment process and recorded whether the subject met the evaluation standards or not, using O, X. The study suggests that pre-service elementary school teachers' manual skills of experimental apparatuses were under far below our projections. Particularly, in case of alcohol burner, the subjects showed lower ability to properly light the burners - which is to brush through the lampwick with fire - and to adjust the height of tripods according to the flame. Also, when it comes to dropper, they were not held the way they were supposed to be. In addition, when designing prepared specimen, the subjects used their hands instead of tweezers and often skipped the process of dripping water drop and wiping water with an oilpaper. Moreover, they did not know how to use a microscope properly so there were many times that they could not focus a microscope, failing to observe the objects. Educational implications are discussed.

• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.210-223
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• 2014

When sarira reliquary was found in stone pagoda of Mireuksa Temple, there were 494 gold artifacts, including inner gold pot, gold plate with inscription for Sarira enshrinement, etc. Most of gold artifacts were crafted, but there were 22 gold plates and 4 gold ingots, which did not have any specific shape. It was considered that they had not been crafted. Since gold exists as a metal rather than a metallic oxide in nature, in general, it can be crafted by melting and shaping. However, gold in nature has impurities so it has to be refined to have malleability. The characteristic features were identified through the analysis of gold artifacts from sarira reliquary found in stone pagoda of Mireuksa Temple. The analysis result showed that there were 3 types of gold; pure gold artifacts, artifacts produced with silver containing gold and natural gold ingots. Inner gold pot, gold earrings and gold small beads were produced with pure gold and they contained less than 1wt.% of copper. It seemed like they were produced as pure gold to be shaped by hammering. Gold plate with inscription, tweezers, gold earrings, ingots, etc. were produced with silver containing gold as they had to be more solid. Gold ingots seemed to be natural gold considering the distribution of silver and copper in them, but it cannot be concluded as there are not enough information on gold ingots in Korea. The comprehensive research on gold ingots from various regions in Korea has to be carried out to confirm the above. Sarira Reliquary showed the very sophisticated gold craftsmanship. Gold ingots with the inscriptions, which say 1 nyang, were approximately 14g. Considering the weight of these ingots as standard, weights of other ingots were half nyang(7g), 2 nyang(28g), etc.