Woah, I'm sorry I didn't read the original question properly, sorry...
I didn't realize you were teaching a course in the subject!
My serious recommendation for that -
or at least as a supplement for those curious students - is to watch the Mechanical Universe.
It is a 52 part, half-hour series that explains introductory physics for freshman-level students. It uses vectors & calculus but nothing out of reach to anyone who applies themself, it shows how to use these things in the early lectures.
It goes through a lot of the history. There are visual aids to how Calculus was developed, about putting all those triangles into a circle to square it - (even into a teapot lol).
It will describe, in visual & mathematical detail, how Gallileo came to his conclusions, how Descartes erred in some of his thoughts. How Copernicus & Kepler came from Epicycles to Ellipses. They are fascinating graphics, it gets into real detail about how Kepler plotted the orbit of Mars.
It takes scenes from some 1973 German movie about Kepler that I'm dying to see!
Furthermore, Newton's thought process is detailed, & not just with an Apple falling on his head
It is all about momentum, cannons shooting balls into orbit, escape velocity from the moon & one of the most elegant things I'll remember for the rest of my life - showing by the use of the Pythagorean theorem how Newton calculated that the moon falls, deviating in it's path in the exact amount he calculated (wrong only because of incorrectly assuming the Earth to be bigger than it is but they give the right figures lol).
There is also a huge section on waves and resonance, including why some bridge collapsed due to resonance (including the video).
Then, it goes on to describe how Faraday came to his conclusions, how Maxwell formulated his equations & found the speed of light.
Then it goes on to describe the theory of Relativity (with an incorrect derivation of Gamma I believe because of frame-jumping but I'm not 100% on that yet).
Finally, it describes the rudiments of Quantum theory & even making a brief foray into particle physics (brief!).
I sincerely can't recommend this course enough. Each episonde is 30 mins long, you could have the class watch each episode and then proide concluding remarks afterwards & have not only an easy workload for yourself but teach the students in more detail than I've read in most books on any history. I can only imagine how strong this show would affect them, it would certainly show them the beauty behind the science.
It's free to use, check their website. Maybe you'd have to register for legal purposes but as far as I know it's pretty much free. Check it out for yourself, I'm assuming ideal conditions that you have the time and all lol but hopefully you'll like it enough or it's appropraite enough for your aims.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mechanical_Universe
All the best, :)
