Same molecule, different representations

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.