Journal article
Characterizing Students’ Mechanistic Reasoning about London Dispersion Forces
Journal of chemical education, Vol.93(10), pp.1713-1724
10/11/2016
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00298
Abstract
Characterizing how students construct causal mechanistic explanations for chemical phenomena can provide us with important insights into the ways that students develop understanding of chemistry concepts. Here, we present two qualitative studies of undergraduate general chemistry students’ reasoning about the causes of London dispersion forces in nonpolar species such as helium atoms. In the first study, we used semi-structured interviews to examine students’ verbal explanations for how and why electrical interactions arise between helium atoms. In the second, we used an online short-answer version of the interview task to examine the prevalence of the drawing and explanation types we observed in student interviews. We present a characterization of students’ explanations and drawings in terms of increasing sophistication and demonstrate how it may be used as a model for assessing students’ ability to engage in scientific practices such as explanation.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Characterizing Students’ Mechanistic Reasoning about London Dispersion Forces
- Creators
- Nicole BeckerKeenan NoyesMelanie Cooper
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of chemical education, Vol.93(10), pp.1713-1724
- Publisher
- American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc
- DOI
- 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00298
- ISSN
- 0021-9584
- eISSN
- 1938-1328
- Grant note
- DOI: 10.13039/100000172, name: Division of Undergraduate Education, award: DUE 0816692, DUE 1043707, DUE 1122472, DUE 1341987, DUE 1359818, DUE 1420005
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 10/11/2016
- Academic Unit
- Chemistry
- Record Identifier
- 9983985886102771
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