Professor Simon Rees simon.rees@durham.ac.uk
Professor
Inconsistent Language Use in Online Resources Explaining the Mole Has Implications for Students’ Understanding
Rees, Simon W.; Bruce, Megan
Authors
Professor Megan Bruce megan.bruce@durham.ac.uk
Director Of Combined Honours
Abstract
The quantity amount of substance (symbol “n”) and its SI unit, the mole (symbol “mol”), are unfamiliar to novice chemistry students. Developing a good understanding of this quantity and its unit has previously been demonstrated to be problematic. In this paper, we analyze 14 different online resources in terms of how they define and apply the mole. Our findings show widespread use of the mole as a quantity rather than as a unit in mathematical expressions as well as in text. This leads to the absence of reference to the quantity amount of substance and is inconsistent with how other quantities (such as mass) and their units (g) are represented. This practice is also evident in wider pedagogic contexts and can cause confusion for students developing understanding of the mole. We provide recommendations to address this issue through the consistent use of the mole as a SI unit for the quantity amount of substance.
Citation
Rees, S. W., & Bruce, M. (2022). Inconsistent Language Use in Online Resources Explaining the Mole Has Implications for Students’ Understanding. Journal of Chemical Education, 99(7), https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c00199
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Online Publication Date | Jun 14, 2022 |
Publication Date | 2022 |
Deposit Date | Jul 18, 2022 |
Publicly Available Date | Mar 29, 2024 |
Journal | Journal of Chemical Education |
Print ISSN | 0021-9584 |
Electronic ISSN | 1938-1328 |
Publisher | American Chemical Society |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 99 |
Issue | 7 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c00199 |
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Copyright Statement
This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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