Implicit vs. explicit depiction of hydrogen atoms in representations of organic structures: The effect on solving cyclohexane problems

CHED 1477

Daniel S. Domin, ddomin@tnstate.edu, Department of Chemistry, Tennessee State University, 3500 John Merritt Blvd., Nashville, TN 37209-1561 and Haim Weizman, hweizman@chem.ucsd.edu, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr, La Jolla, CA 92093-0303.
An early and critical aspect of problem solving is interpreting information contained within presented representations. Pictorial representations of chemical structures are key for communicating information in organic chemistry and therefore it is important to study how students perceive them. In this study, we used pictorial representations of cyclohexane derivatives to ascertain the affect of depicting either implicitly or explicitly the hydrogen atoms in the presented representations and the subsequent affect on students' problem solving. As part of their organic chemistry course exam, students answered two questions, one pertaining to geometric isomerism and the other pertaining to stability of chair conformations. Students received the questions in which the presented representations were in one of two possible formats: (1) isomerism-implicit depiction/stability-explicit depiction or (2) isomerism-explicit depiction/stability-implicit depiction. In this paper, the authors will address the influences each type of depiction had on students' abilities to solve the cyclohexane problems.
 

Chemistry Education Research
1:30 PM-4:55 PM, Tuesday, April 8, 2008 Hilton New Orleans Riverside -- HEC A, Oral

Division of Chemical Education

The 235th ACS National Meeting, New Orleans, LA, April 6-10, 2008