Same molecule, different representations

By Fraser Scott2021-11-30T06:40:00

Students looking at books with different representations of sulphur dioxide around them

Source: © VectorMine/Shutterstock

Chemistry is full of varied representations. How do we help our students identify the information encoded within them?

Researchers Ayesha Farheen and Scott Lewis investigated how representations of a molecule affect students’ ability to explain chemical bonding. They asked 1000 university chemistry students to predict the chemical properties of sulfur dioxide. The results revealed that students’ interpretations and predictions varied depending on how the chemical entity was represented. In this article, senior pharmacology lecturer Fraser Scott explains why students need to be fluent with varied representations if they are to understand fundamental concepts in chemistry.

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