Nobili on Mobile! When the scientific instruments exhibitions are at your fingertips

Abstract

This paper presents a general view of a proposal for a digital reinterpretation of a collection of scientific instruments belonging to the Physics Cabinet of the Science Museum of the University of Coimbra. In this cataloging, the local and global aspects of each instrument are inventoried and represented by a semantic network of concepts, facts, ideas, and narratives, resulting in a knowledge base about scientific physics instruments. This knowledge base will be made available to students, researchers, and the general public through a mobile phone application. The article also offers a review of the transformations of the conceptual models of material culture studies related to scientific instruments and adds some contributions to this field of study.