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Rick
TOOMEY
1 and Fred
GARAFALO
2
ABSTRACT: Although the disciplines of chemistry and physics often focus on different aspects of phenomena in nature, there are many areas in which the two overlap. At the introductory level of instruction for example, fundamental concepts like mass, rates of change, force, and energy are important in both disciplines. Such topics are usually introduced in chemistry courses as needed, with little or no attention paid to the difficulties that students encounter when confronting them for the first time. Since chemistry courses often precede physics courses, particularly in science curricula in the United States, the challenges associated with helping students to understand such concepts can provide an opportunity to improve instruction in chemistry, and other science courses as well. This paper describes how these concepts are introduced and developed in a college freshman chemistry curriculum for science majors, and how this has led to changes in topic development in other physical science courses. The work has been guided by educational research findings, and feedback obtained over the course of a decade from the authors' active learning environments. [Chem. Educ. Res. Pract.: 2003, 4, 189-204] KEY WORDS: common topics in physics and chemistry; constructing concepts; operational definitions; rates of change; force; energy CORRESPONDENCE: Fred GARAFALO, School of Arts and Sciences, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, 179 Longwood Ave., Boston, MA, 02115, USA; tel: 1 617-732-2949; e-mail: agarafalo@mcp.edu
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