Abstract

MARTINEZ, Ana; VALDES, Jesús; TALANQUER, Vicente  and  CHAMIZO, José Antonio. Structure of Matter: Knowing vs. Thinking. Educ. quím [online]. 2012, vol.23, n.3, pp.361-369. ISSN 0187-893X.

This paper describes an alternative approach to the teaching of topics related to atomic and molecular structure of matter at the college level. Traditional chemistry courses in this area focus on describing what we know about the basic characteristics and properties of atoms and molecules. We claim that a better educational approach would be to teach students how to think using submicroscopic models of matter to solve relevant problems. A concrete example of the proposed curricular approach is presented in the paper.

Keywords : atomic structure; molecular structure; models; modeling; reasoning; structure of matter; teaching.

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